Partnerships give life to health research - they stimulate new ways of thinking, connect policymakers with researchers and make the most out of scarce resources. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) places tremendous value on partnerships. Partnership is at the very core of CIHR's mandate.

This point is dramatically illustrated in the stories found in our 2007-2008 Annual Report. CIHR had the unique opportunity of recounting the experiences of seven Canadians who have been touched by Canadian health research. Each of these accounts underlines the importance of partnerships in the pursuit and application of health research and demonstrates why CIHR is focusing more efforts to build significant partnerships and collaborations.

Consider Paul Kean, who lives in Lumsden, Newfoundland, on the northeast coast of Bonavista Bay. Paul works at the local fish processing plant. As Paul puts it, "In the fishing industry, you work as hard as you can, as long as you can, and everything else falls by the wayside. It's sad, but that's the way it is in most fishing communities," Paul says.

But, Paul saw the damage - carpal tunnel syndrome, back problems and an over-reliance on over-the-counter pain medications. Determined to act, he partnered with CIHR-funded researchers from Memorial University on a project to reduce the number of soft tissue injuries at the plant. Working together, the union, plant management and researchers came up with several low-cost and easy-to-implement solutions that have help reduce the injury rate at the plant and have increased productivity. For example, workstations requiring standing for long periods of time now have foot stands or rests installed to help alleviate workers' back pain and tired legs.

Dana Markoff from Brampton, Ontario also has a compelling story about the power of partnerships. The mother of four was diagnosed with breast cancer, underwent a lumpectomy and participated in an important clinical trail for a new, less toxic form of radiation therapy pioneered by Dr. Jean-Philippe Pignol of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. In traditional radiation therapy, skin can become red, itchy and tender - half of the time the radiation causes the skin to be burnt right off.

The CIHR-funded trial delivered dramatic results - women receiving intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) were two to three times less likely to suffer painful radiation burns. Dana was one of them. "I hosted Christmas dinner that year. I had twenty-some people over, with one treatment still to go," she notes. Today, as a result of important information generated by the trial, IMRT has been accepted as the standard way to deliver radiation for breast cancer in hospitals across Canada.

CIHR relies on partnerships.

Our partners from the research community provide valuable support to maintain a peer-review system to ensure CIHR invests in the very best research. The research community, of course, also drives innovation. Some of these fundamental discoveries may take years to reach their full potential, but their continued delivery contributes greatly to the knowledge, people, and entrepreneurial advantages identified by the Government of Canada as the building blocks of the Science and Technology (S&T) strategy. CIHR has expanded its partnerships with international partners to ensure Canada has access to global knowledge networks. One such partnership, with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, helped support important clinical trials testing the effectiveness of male circumcision in preventing HIV. Both trials stopped early after initial data showed the procedure dramatically reduced transmission of HIV. Time magazine rated the research as the number-one medical breakthrough of 2007.

Other partners help translate research findings into exciting new technologies with commercial potential, new ways of preventing illness and new ways of caring for those who are sick. CIHR's Institute for Health Services and Policy Research has been holding meetings across Canada with provincial health authorities to discuss an ambitious and much-needed need initiative known as Evidence on Tap. The program would be a mechanism for linking researchers with decision makers to produce timely and policy-relevant evidence on key priority issues identified by provincial decision makers. The program would enable CIHR to better respond to health care decision maker needs for more urgent access to health research information.

CIHR also has important partnerships with the other federal granting councils -
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Foundation for Innovation - as well as many other federal and provincial organizations and non-governmental granting agencies.

In 2008, we will be redoubling our efforts to build significant partnerships and collaborations with each of the groups described above. By focusing on partnerships, CIHR can play an important role in helping the Government of Canada achieve goals set out in the S&T strategy.

Dr. Pierre Chartrand
Acting President
Canadian Institutes of Health Research