The IHSPR Innovator – August 2012

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The Institute of Health Services and Policy Research Newsletter

Table of Contents

Message from Dr. Robyn Tamblyn, IHSPR Scientific Director

Welcome to the August edition of the IHSPR Innovator! This month I would like to take a moment to recognize the value of fostering partnerships in advancing innovative and effective health services and policy research.

IHSPR is proud to partner with the CIHR Institute for Population and Public Health to co-lead the Community-based Primary Healthcare (CBPHC) Signature Initiative. The aim of the CBPHC initiative is to promote improved health through the development of innovative models of care that target chronic disease management and reduced inequities for vulnerable populations. IHSPR is collaborating with 13 CIHR Institutes/Initiatives, five provincial health research organizations and two international health research bodies in Australia and New Zealand to support this initiative. The collaboration is a testimony to the value of partnerships in advancing our mutual priorities in primary healthcare research.

The CBPHC Innovation Team grants is the first phase of the initiative to achieve this goal. The teams, comprised of inter-professional investigators, health professionals, and senior decision-makers will develop and evaluate new models of care for improving chronic disease management and access for vulnerable populations, with oversight by patients, families, and communities. Congratulations to the 36 teams that have been invited to submit a full application.

Another important element of the CBPHC initiative is the Patient-Oriented CBPHC Network, also a component of Canada's Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR). This network is designed to address the challenges of project scale-up through effective translation of innovative models of CBPHC to Canadians across the country.

The newly reinvigorated Partnerships for Health Systems Improvement (PHSI) funding opportunity is designed to strengthen Canada's healthcare system through collaborative, applied and policy-relevant research. 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.

The Evidence Informed Healthcare Renewal (EIHR) Initiative further supports partnerships between researchers and decision makers, to work together to advance the current state of knowledge, generate novel and creative solutions, and translate evidence for uptake into policy and practice to strengthen Canada's healthcare systems. This Initiative recently saw the launch of the new EIHR Portal, a continuously updated repository of policy-relevant documents that address issues in healthcare renewal in Canada. Developed in partnership with 16 healthcare focused organizations and members of the EIHR Roundtable, and featuring collaboration between the McMaster Health Forum and IHSPR, this success in EIHR provides further evidence of the strength partnerships in promoting innovative and effective health services and policy research.

I encourage you to visit the IHSPR website to learn more about all of these important initiatives that IHSPR and its partners are very proud to support. Moreover, if you know of any upcoming opportunities for collaboration with IHSPR, I urge to you contact a member of our team to further explore the idea.

Upcoming Events

EIHR Portal Training webinar: September 13, 2012 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST. For more information please email kwood.ihspr@mcgill.ca.

The International Society on Priorities in Health Care - 9th Biennial Conference. Vancouver, BC. September 16 – 19, 2012.

IT Healthcare Canada Conference and Exhibition. Toronto, ON. October 2-4, 2012.

Society for Medical Decision Making 2012 Annual Meeting. Pheonix, USA. October 17-20, 2012.

International Forum on Health Care and Information Communication Technology (HICT). Halifax, NS. October 19-21, 2012.

The Canadian Conference on Global Health. Ottawa, ON. October 21-23, 2012.

Advancing Excellence in Gender, Sex and Health Research. Montreal, QC. October 29-31, 2012.

Second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research. Beijing, China. October 31 - November 3, 2012.

Chair Showcase: Dr. Ivy Bourgeault

CIHR Health and Human Resource Policy Chair

Dr. Ivy Bourgeault is the Health Canada – CIHR Chair in Health and Human Resource Policy (HHR), and a professor in the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Bourgeault's goal for the HHR Policy Chair is to introduce an HHR lens to Health Services and Policy Research (HSPR). Coming to the field of HSPR from a background in sociology, Dr. Bourgeault wants to use the Chair as a way to focus health services research on health and human resource policy research dialogue, while building a bridge between sociology, policy, economics and health services.

Through the activities of the HHR Chair, Dr. Bourgeault has been able to increase the awareness of HHR. She has helped to create conversations with policy communities to focus on explicit HHR research and as a result created a network of HHR researchers. Dr. Bourgeault has also been working to address some key challenges facing the field of HHR by creating a prototype for an observatory to collect data, create knowledge, act as a repository for information, and create linkages with users of knowledge in this field.

Needless to say, Dr. Bourgeault has been very busy during her time as Chair. The position has allowed her the time to look at the perplexing issues behind HHR and to examine these questions both theoretically and substantively. One of the activities Dr. Bourgeault has been intensively working on is leveraging funds with her Chair and building both capacity and a network for HHR research. At the same time, she continues to participate on her own research team, providing linkages to HHR for team members with the same research interests, and contributes to the projects of her colleagues.

In addition to her many activities, Dr. Bourgeault is also developing a post-graduate program in HHR at the University of Ottawa, with the aim of training HHR researchers with key competencies and expertise in the field.

Dr. Bourgeault is pleased to provide tips for students and aspiring health researchers.

  1. Go into HHR! This is an area of growth, and high impact in health services.
  2. Get connected with your colleagues through IHSPR and CAHSPR by attending their social events and participating in their professional networks
  3. Find a supportive mentor – remember it is easy to connect virtually, so they do not necessarily need to be from your home university.
  4. Get your word out! Use high impact journals, webinars and innovative knowledge translation tools and utilize your research networks. Once people recognize your work, then you are recognized as having an expertise in the field.

Did you know??

Dr. Bourgeault's hair was straight before she had her son!

More information on Dr. Bourgeault's research can be found online.

Coming Up...

The 11th Annual New Principal Investigators Meeting (October 26-28, 2012, Mont Gabriel, Québec)

For new faculty at Canadian Universities, the goal of this meeting is to facilitate career development. You can nominate new principal investigators and junior faculty in their first four years in your department or research program. Host CIHR-Institute of Genetics (IG) and Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) welcome health services and policy and public policy health new principal investigators who align with the mandates of IG and ICR.

Nominees should identify at least one of the two sponsoring Institutes as their primary or secondary CIHR Institute affiliation. All candidates accepted to attend the meeting will have all their travel expenses borne by the host institutes.

To recommend candidates, please write to nicolay.ferrari@mcgill.ca by Friday, August 24, 2012. You may also recommend individuals not in your institution or university.

Please visit the website for more information.

Congratulations!

In the recently published commentary "Advancing Knowledge Translation in Primary Care" by Menear, Grindrod, Clouston, Norton and Légaré, the condition of primary health care in Canada is outlined. The authors explain the importance of knowledge translation in primary care and mention the CIHR's Summer Institute on Primary Health Care Research for Canadian research trainees in June 2010. They believe the key to advancing primary health care research is through knowledge translation.

Published online, please see the full article.

Dr. Maria Chiu's winning Rising Star article has been cited in the "Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes" article in the journal Diabetes Care. View the article online.

Congratulations Dr. Chiu!

Funding Opportunities

Implementation Research in Low to Middle Income Countries

Pre-registration deadline: August 20, 2012
Submission deadline: September 15, 2012

The purpose of this Call is to support implementation research that contributes to the scale-up of effective health interventions related to Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6 in one of the three priority areas:

  • Strategies to facilitate the integration of services to result in improved health outcomes and greater efficiencies.
  • Strategies to improve the performance of health workers (through strengthened supervision and increased motivation) to deliver quality services.
  • Strategies for community engagement to increase awareness of, access to, and utilization of health services, and provision of appropriate services at the community level.

More information is available online.

Partnerships for Health Systems Improvement (2012-2013)

Deadline to apply with partners: September 17, 2012
Competition deadline: November 1, 2012

Partnerships for Health System Improvement (PHSI) aims to strengthen Canada's healthcare system through collaborative, applied and policy-relevant research. PHSI funds teams of decision makers and researchers to conduct applied health services and policy research.

More information is available online.

CIHR Open Operating Grant Program

Registration deadline: August 15, 2012
Application deadline: September 17, 2012

The CIHR Open Operating Grant Program (OOGP) provides operating funds to support research proposals in all areas of health research, including randomized controlled trials.

The full funding opportunity can be found online.

European Observatory Policy Analysis

Deadline: September 19, 2012

CIHR-IHSPR in collaboration with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies will support a project under CIHR's Healthcare Renewal Policy Analysis program. The policy analysis opportunity will support a partnership between a Canadian research team and the Observatory to carry out analysis as part of the Observatory's performance program.

More information is available online.

e-Health Innovations: Supporting More Efficient Population and Person-Centered Healthcare

Deadline: October 16, 2012

The e-Health Innovations funding opportunity will support Canadian investigators to conduct research that will improve processes and/or outcomes related to efficiency and access in the following relevant research areas:

  • Patient-e-Heath
  • New Generation Health Professional
  • Timely Detection and Intervention

More information is available online.

Implementation Research in Low to Middle Income Countries

Pre-registration deadline: August 20, 2012
Submission deadline: September 15, 2012

The purpose of this Call is to support implementation research that contributes to the scale-up of effective health interventions related to Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6 in one of the three priority areas:

  • Strategies to facilitate the integration of services to result in improved health outcomes and greater efficiencies.
  • Strategies to improve the performance of health workers (through strengthened supervision and increased motivation) to deliver quality services.
  • Strategies for community engagement to increase awareness of, access to, and utilization of health services, and provision of appropriate services at the community level.

More information is available online.

Peer Review

Changes are being made to the CIHR Open Suite of Programs and peer review system. For more information regarding the Open Suite of Programs and peer review system please visit CIHR's Website.

Fast Facts on the Proposed reforms of Open Suite of Programs and Peer Review System:

  • New Open Suite of Programs will be structured into two separate, complementary funding schemes:
    • Foundation/Programmatic Research Scheme
    • Project Scheme
  • The Foundation/Programmatic Research Scheme is about funding people, and will include a separate stream for new/early career investigators; the assessment criteria in this scheme would be based on the caliber of the applicant and their vision for their program of research.
  • The Project Scheme is about funding ideas; this model is focused on identifying the best possible ideas and is well positioned to support essential incremental research projects, innovative and original research projects, as well as pilot and/or potentially high-risk research projects.

QUIZ!

As our September Advisory Board meeting is taking place in British Columbia, the August IHSPR Innovator Quiz will be focused on the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research!

  1. What year did Michael Smith win his Nobel Prize in Chemistry?
    1. 1989
    2. 1993
    3. 1990
    4. 1987
  2. Who won the 2012 Aubrey J. Tingle award, presented to the British Columbia researcher whose work in health research is internationally recognized and has a significant impact on advancing clinical or health services and policy research?
    1. Dr. Julio Montaner
    2. Dr. Michael Hayden
    3. Dr. Bruce McManus
    4. None of the above
  3. How many scholars did the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research fund in 2012 as part of their career investigator program?
    1. 72
    2. 14
    3. 23
    4. 7

Please send your answers back to info.ihspr@mcgill.ca for a chance have your name entered into this months raffle to win cool prizes if you have all three answers
correct!

We would like to hear from YOU!
CIHR - 3666 McTavish, Second Floor
Montréal, QC, H3A 1Y2
Tel: 514-398-5736
Email: info.ihspr@mcgill.ca