SPOR SUPPORT Units

What are SUPPORT Units?

SUPPORT Units are specialized research service centres referred to as Support for People and Patient-Oriented Research and Trials (SUPPORT) Units. They are being created in an effort to provide the necessary and often highly specialized expertise to those engaged in patient-oriented research.

SUPPORT Units are multidisciplinary centres of methodologists and other experts who are essential to the patient-oriented research enterprise. These experts include clinical epidemiologists, biostatisticians, social scientists, health economists and clinical trialists, as well as research support staff.

CIHR is committed to providing support for centres across the country. A jurisdiction is formed by a province, a territory, or a group of provinces and/or territories that represents a region of the Canadian population. Each SUPPORT Unit will be developed in partnership with the jurisdictional partners to ensure that the design is appropriate to the jurisdiction and capable of achieving the intended impact.

Objectives

The national vision for the SUPPORT Units is to provide core jurisdictional facilities focused on establishing state-of-the-art core competencies in often highly specialized methodological areas and offer collaboration to other researchers engaged in patient-oriented research. These Units will also lead and facilitate decision-making within the health services setting and catchment area, and foster the implementation of best practices. Using an integrated knowledge translation model, they will train more people, and be directly involved in local research decision-making.

The objectives of a SUPPORT Unit are to:

  1. Provide a critical mass of highly specialized and multi-disciplinary methodological expertise to those engaged in patient-oriented research.(includes: clinical epidemiologists, biostatisticians, social scientists, health economists and clinical trialists, research support staff including research coordinators, research associates and assistants, data collectors and data analysts.);
  2. Provide Canada with state-of-the-art Units for advancing methods and training in comparative effectiveness research and developing the next generation of methodologists, building support where it does not now exist and enhancing it where it is not sufficient;
  3. Assist investigators to design relevant research studies (including observational and interventional studies), conduct biostatistical analyses, manage data, provide and teach project management skills, and ensure studies meet all relevant regulatory standards;
  4. Address research questions / needs of knowledge users by producing solutions focused answers and supporting these users in the application of solutions; and
  5. Create capacity to provide timely access to linked data (from administrative data to clinical data), and to integrate existing or new databases with lab, drug, imaging and diagnostic data

Health Research Investment

CIHR will be working with each jurisdiction to develop a proposal for their SUPPORT Unit. It is anticipated that proposals will be developed and submitted for review once each jurisdiction is prepared to move forward, beginning in the fall of 2012.

CIHR is also working with our partners to identify costs and determine the unique investment needs for each jurisdiction. It is estimated that the total cost for a SUPPORT Unit will be in the range of $10-$30M over 5 years. CIHR will match the financial commitments invested by the jurisdictions.