IHSPR eBulletin - Summer 2010

In this issue:

Message from the Scientific Director

With only four months left in my term as Scientific Director, the CIHR-IHSPR team is as busy as ever. We are hard at work planning new initiatives, launching funding opportunities, and preparing for CIHR's upcoming International Review. In this special summer edition of the eBulletin, we are pleased to highlight some of these exciting developments.

Community-based primary healthcare continues to be a dominant focus for our Institute. Canada does not have robust primary healthcare from coast to coast. We lag behind several other developed countries in terms of our access, quality, comprehensiveness and coordination of care and our commitment to primary healthcare research. And yet a strong community-oriented primary healthcare system is at the heart of all high-performing healthcare systems and is linked to better health outcomes, improved equity, and an improved patient experience. Decision-makers need research evidence to address this disparity, and CIHR-IHSPR and its partners are working to provide this. In addition to the recent launch of targeted funding opportunities, CIHR-IHSPR is in the process of developing a pan-Canadian initiative to support community-based primary healthcare research, capacity building, and knowledge translation.

CIHR-IHSPR has also turned its eye towards the financing, sustainability, and governance of the Canadian healthcare system. As the expiration of the current Health Accord approaches, these issues will become top of mind for policy makers and the public alike. Despite debate and discussion, needed research evidence is still scarce. CIHR-IHSPR has launched a call for knowledge syntheses and will consult with policy makers to determine what research is required to support evidence-informed healthcare renewal in Canada.

Amidst these new activities, we are also preparing for IHSPR's upcoming transition. The search for the next Scientific Director is well on its way, and I have full confidence that the Institute will be in excellent hands come January 2011.

Sincerely,
Colleen Flood
Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Health Service and Policy Research

To read Colleen Flood's transition message, please visit the CIHR website

IHSPR'S Rising Stars

IHSPR's annual Rising Star Award recognizes outstanding contributions to research and knowledge translation (KT) made by graduate students and post-doctoral Fellows in the field of health services and policy research. Through a competitive review process, the Rising Star award is conferred upon promising trainees who demonstrate exceptional levels of achievement early on in their careers. It is our pleasure to introduce this year's CIHR-IHSPR Rising Star Award winners: Dr. Irfan Dhalla (St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto), Dr. Marc-André Gagnon (McGill University), and Dr. Lianne Jeffs (University of Toronto). Already well on their way to establishing accomplished research careers, all three Rising Stars won for their significant contributions as trainees.

As result of his work as a post-doctoral Fellow at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Dr. Irfan Dhalla was the lead author of the paper "Prescribing of opioid analgesics and related mortality before and after the introduction of long-acting oxycodone." Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (2009) this article received national media attention and demonstrated a striking relationship between an increase in opioid-related deaths and the addition of OxyContin, to the public drug formulary.

While completing her PhD dissertation at the University of Toronto and serving as Director of Nursing Research at St. Michael's Hospital, Dr. Lianne Jeffs developed the Nursing Research Advancing Practice (RAP) Program. This knowledge translation initiative aims to build research capacity and equip clinical nurses with the skills and resources to conduct research and quality improvement projects. With over 60 nurses involved in 20 projects, the program has served as a key retention strategy and results have informed local-level patient outcomes as well as policy changes at organizational and professional levels.

Based on his doctoral research at McGill University, Dr. Marc-André Gagnon developed the knowledge translation initiative, "The Dominant Business Model in the Pharmaceutical Sector: Profits Based on Control over Medical Knowledge." This lecture series is intended to raise awareness among physicians about corporate strategies used by pharmaceutical companies to unduly influence medical research and the prescribing habits of physicians.. By explaining these strategies, Dr. Gagnon's initiative enhances understanding of certain structural problems in the medical establishment and enables physicians to take a rational look at possible regulatory reforms and amendments to existing codes of ethics.

In addition to receiving a $1000 prize, Drs. Dhalla, Gagnon, and Jeffs, presented their winning research and KT initiatives at the 2010 Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy research and will be featured on the CIHR website and through video profiles. IHSPR offers sincere congratulations to the 2010 Rising Stars and looks forward to their continuing contributions to health services and policy research!

For more information about our Rising Star winners or to learn how to apply, please visit the CIHR-IHSPR website.

Winner of the 2010 CIHR-IHSPR Article of the Year Award: Dr. Jack Tu

The CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research is pleased to announce Dr. Jack Tu (Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto) as the recipient of the 2010 CIHR-IHSPR Article of the Year Award. This award is intended to acknowledge published research that has significantly contributed to the advancement of the field of health services and policy research in Canada.

Dr. Tu won the Article of the Year Award for his lead authorship on the paper "Effectiveness of Public Report Cards for Improving the Quality of Cardiac Care: The EFFECT study: a Randomized Trial." Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the article represents the first-ever randomized clinical trial to assess if public hospital report cards can improve quality of care. While the results showed that public report cards did not improve all aspects of cardiac care, there were significant reductions in mortality rates among patients at hospitals exposed earlier to public reporting compared to delayed reporting.

The impact of Dr. Tu's work on report cards has been widespread. Many hospitals in Ontario and other regions have adapted the methods and results from the EFFECT study to improve quality of care. Dr. Tu has also been invited to work with many organizations in Canada that strive to improve cardiac care, like the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care.

Dr. Tu is an accomplished health services researcher. He is a Senior Scientist and the head of the Cardiovascular and Diagnostic Imaging research program at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto. He is also an attending physician in the Division of Cardiology at the Schulich Heart Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Health Services Research. As a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Dr. Tu supervises students at all levels of training. He is an internationally acclaimed researcher and prolific publisher.

As part of the Article of the Year award, Dr. Tu will receive a prize of $10,000 and will be profiled on the CIHR website. The CIHR-IHSPR team offers its sincere congratulations to Dr. Tu on this major achievement.

For more information about Dr. Tu's research or to learn how to apply, please visit the CIHR-IHSPR website.

IHSPR Primary Healthcare Updates

  • IHSPR has added Primary and Community-Based Healthcare as a separate priority to its list of strategic research priorities
  • IHSPR has recently launched two new funding opportunities targeted especially to primary healthcare research
  • The executive summary report from the 2010 CIHR Primary Healthcare Summit: Patient Oriented Primary Healthcare – Scaling Up Innovation is now available online

Financing, Sustainability, and Governance: A CAHSPR Panel

The financing, sustainability, and governance of Canada's healthcare system have long been topics of vigorous discussion and debate, but as the 2014 expiration of the First Ministers' Health Accord approaches, research evidence – not rhetoric – will be needed to support informed policy decisions.

IHSPR hosted an panel at the 2010 Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) Conference in Toronto in order to discuss what research is required to provide a sound evidence base for a possible renegotiation of the Accord. Moderated by Colleen Flood, the panel featured national and international experts Dr. Stefan Gress (University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany), Dr. Jeremiah Hurley (McMaster University), Dr. Greg Marchildon (University of Saskatchewan), and Dr. Mark Stabile (University of Toronto).

Panelists recommended that in order to move beyond the intractable public versus private debate, creative ways of financing the healthcare system need to be explored:

Currently, Canada is 'stuck' in a publicly financed system with a rule that the government cannot raise taxes, and as a result, Canadians are often forced to choose between healthcare, environment and education. The research community needs to be innovative and needs to generate data on different ways of financing that would prevent us from having to make this choice, for example, a different name for taxes, or ways for finance transfer. -Dr. Jeremiah Hurley

Drs. Stabile and Gress called for further research into different models of collective financing, such as pre-funding prescription drug coverage for the elderly (akin to Canada Pension Plan contributions) and universal social health insurance, while Dr. Marchildon suggested that the possible renegotiation of the Accord could offer the federal government an opportunity to explore alternative block funding models and new options for direct contributions to healthcare. The role for the private sector was also identified as a pressing research priority, but Dr. Hurley cautioned that more and better quality data are urgently needed to first understand the current extent of private sector involvement in the Canadian healthcare system.

To support good governance, panelists called for further investigation into ways of enforcing the Canada Health Act and types of conditional funding agreements that best improve accountability and drive change.

The panel sparked lively debate and prompted audience members to suggest additional priorities including the political and economic implications of unpaid caregiving which, given Canada's aging population, is expected to shape the development of a future health accord.

Building off the ideas generated in the panel, IHSPR will continue to meet with researchers and senior policy makers this fall in order to understand the evidence on financing, sustainability, and governance that will be needed to support decision makers in the coming years.

Funding News and Opportunities

Knowledge Synthesis Grant: Financing, Sustainability and Governance

The specific objectives of this funding opportunity are:

  • To increase the uptake/application of synthesized knowledge in decision-making by supporting partnerships between researchers and knowledge users to produce scoping reviews and syntheses that respond to the information needs of knowledge users in all areas of health;
  • To extend the benefits of knowledge synthesis to new kinds of questions relevant to knowledge users and areas of research that have not traditionally been synthesized.
  • The CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR-IHSPR) will support successful Knowledge Synthesis applications that are determined to be relevant to the research priority area of Financing, Sustainability and Governance.

Value and term: The maximum amount awarded for a single grant is $100,000 per annum for up to one year.
Application deadline: 2010-10-01
For more information, please visit the CIHR Funding Opportunities Database

Knowledge to Action Operating Grant: Primary and Community-Based Healthcare

The specific objective of this funding opportunity is to increase the uptake/application of knowledge by supporting partnerships between researchers and knowledge-users to bridge a knowledge to action gap, and in so doing, increase the understanding of knowledge application through the process. The CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR-IHSPR) will support successful Knowledge to Action applications that are determined to be relevant to the research priority area of Primary and Community-Based Healthcare.
Value and term: The maximum amount awarded for a single grant is $100,000 per annum for up to two years.
Application deadline: 2010-10-01
For more information, please visit the CIHR Funding Opportunities Database

Partnerships for Health System Improvement

The purpose of this funding opportunity is to support teams of researchers and decision makers interested in conducting applied health services and policy research that will be useful to health system managers and/or decision makers. CIHR-IHSPR will support successful PHSI applications that are determined to be relevant to the following research areas:

  • Primary and community-based healthcare
  • Health services and policy research
  • Access to Appropriate Care across the Continuum
  • Financing, Sustainability and Governance
  • Health Information
  • Drug Policy

Value and term: The maximum amount awarded by CIHR for a single grant is $400,000 for up to three years (partnership contributions are in addition to the CIHR amount). $900,000 is available to fund applications relevant to the area of Primary and Community-based Healthcare; $1.2 M is available to fund applications relevant to Health Services and Policy Research.
Important Dates:

  • Application Deadline: 2010-11-01
  • Applicants interested in obtaining Competition Partner support are required to contact their potential competition partner to request supporting documentation no later than September 15, 2010 (for the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), the deadline is September 3, 2010). For Quebec applicants considering partnerships with the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ) or the ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux du Québec (MSSS), there is a Letter of Intent stage administered by FRSQ with a deadline of August, 31 2010.
    For more information, please visit the CIHR Funding Opportunities Database

Bridge Funding Operating Grant

CIHR-IHSPR will offer one year bridge funding to applications that are determined to be relevant to the research priority areas listed below. These one year operating grants afford principal investigators the opportunity to begin or continue their work without the loss of momentum, staff, or trainees, and to resubmit their research proposal in subsequent competitions.

  • Primary and Community-Based Healthcare
  • Access to Appropriate Care across the Continuum
  • Financing, Sustainability and Governance
  • Health Information
  • Drug Policy

Value and term: The maximum amount awarded for a single grant is $100,000 per annum for up to one year.
Application deadline: 2010-08-16
For more information, please visit the CIHR Funding Opportunities Database

IHSPR Travel Awards for Trainees and New Investigators

IHSPR will provide travel awards in the 2010 to 2011 fiscal year for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and new investigators to attend and present their research at meetings, conferences (including international conferences) and/or symposia that align with the Institute's mandate and advance their professional development and/or knowledge translation initiatives in health services and policy research. The maximum amount for a single travel award funded shall not exceed $1,000 to cover the costs of travel, accommodation, per diem for meals, and conference registration fees. The next application deadline is October 1, 2010.

CIHR International Review 2011

As CIHR reaches its tenth anniversary, and in keeping with its legislated responsibility, the CIHR Governing Council is coordinating a second International Review of CIHR.

The review will address the following overarching question(s):

  • Has CIHR been effective in fulfilling its mandate as outlined in the CIHR Act?
  • How can CIHR improve at achieving its mandate?

The review will be conducted by an International Review Panel chaired by Dr. Elias Zerhouni. In addition, the International Review Panel will receive input from 13 Expert Review Teams that have been recruited to conduct reviews of the CIHR Institutes. The 2011 International Review will take place in Ottawa, starting with the Institute reviews in February 2011, followed by the International Review Panel meeting in March 2011.

For more information, please visit the CIHR website.

Information Webinar Series on CIHR's Integrated Knowledge Translation Funding Opportunities

Integrated knowledge translation (iKT) is an approach to doing research whereby stakeholders or potential knowledge users are engaged in the entire research process. Whether you are a first-time applicant or resubmitting a proposal, CIHR will be offering a series of information webinars intended to provide general information about our iKT programs (i.e. objectives, eligibility, application process, etc). In addition to this overview, participants will gain insight into the review process and those elements that can strengthen an integrated KT project proposal.

If you are interested in participating in one the sessions, please email kt-ac@cihr-irsc.gc.ca and indicate which session(s) you plan to attend. You will receive a confirmation email with the necessary sign-in details for your session(s). As these sessions are being offered on a pilot basis, they will be held in English only with the opportunity to ask questions in either official language. Based on participant feedback, we may hold future sessions in French.

Knowledge to Action, Thursday, September 2nd, 3-4:30pm EDT
The intent of this funding opportunity is to accelerate the translation of knowledge by linking researchers and knowledge-users to move knowledge into action, and to increase the understanding of knowledge application through the process.
Presenters:

  • Yumna Choudhry, KT Branch, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • Luanne Calcutt, Knowledge Creation Programs – Program Delivery, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • Dr. Martha MacLeod, University of Northern British Columbia, Chair of the Knowledge to Action Merit Review Panel
  • Ms. Cathy Ulrich, Northern Health Authority, Scientific Officer of the Knowledge to Action Merit Review Panel

Partnerships for Health System Improvement, Wednesday, September 8th, 1-2:30pm EDT
PHSI is Canada's premier health services and policy research competition and with its strong emphasis on partnerships and knowledge translation it is also a major resource for managers and policy makers who want relevant research to inform their decision-making.
Presenters:

  • Andrea Smith, KT Branch, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • Dr. Maria Mathews, Memorial University, PHSI Merit Review Panel

Knowledge Synthesis, Tuesday, September 14th, 1-2:30pm EDT
The purpose of this funding opportunity is to support teams of researchers and knowledge users to produce knowledge syntheses and scoping reviews that will contribute to the use of synthesized evidence in decision-making and practice.
Presenters:

  • Yumna Choudhry, KT Branch, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • Luanne Calcutt, Knowledge Creation Programs – Program Delivery, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • Dr. Joan Tranmer, Queen's University, Chair of the Knowledge Synthesis Merit Review Panel
  • Ms. Kelly Abrams, Canadian Health Information Management Association, Member of the Knowledge Synthesis Merit Review Panel

Community News and Events

Webinar: Social Sciences and Humanities Researchers: Making the Transition to CIHR
August 26, 2010 12 PM ET
Presenters:

  • Dr. Danika Goosney, Director Program Planning and Process, CIHR
  • Dr. Francois Simard, Team Leader, SSHRC

The webinar will be a general presentation on CIHR.
Hosted by the Canadian Association of University Research Administrators
For more information or to register, please contact Anne Tyrie at tyriea@telus.net

Fellowship opportunity: CIHR Training Grant in Interdisciplinary Primary Health Care Research - "TUTOR-PHC"
TUTOR-PHC is a one-year, national interdisciplinary research training program funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) with representation from the disciplines of: Family Medicine, Nursing, Psychology, Social Work, Sociology and Education.
Deadline for applications: October 31, 2010
For more information, visit the TUTOR-PHC website

Symposium: Health Outcomes for Better Information and Care – A Foundation for Evidence-Based Practice and Quality Care
September 23-24, 2010, Toronto, Ontario
For more information, visit the University of Toronto, Faculty of Nursing website

New paper: Ferris, L., & Lemmens, T. (2010). Governance of conflicts of interest in postmarketing surveillance research and the Canadian Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network. Open Medicine, 4(2).

North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) Annual Meeting
November 13-17, 2010, Seattle, Washington
Works-in-progress submissions from students, residents and fellows now being accepted. Submission deadline: August 25, 2010
For more information, visit the NAPCRG website