|
|
 Canadian
Medical Association Journal
Home |
|
Social sciences meet basic sciences in new era of health-services research
Health Canada's National Health Research and Development Program (NHRDP) closed its doors Dec. 31, ending a successful 30-year run. In late November those 30 years were marked during the Health Policy Research Nexus Conference at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. It was a great show that celebrated a truly remarkable achievement, with guests and speakers representing the glitterati (well, perhaps the Who's Who) of Canadian health-service research. The NHRDP's work is remarkable because when it was founded there was virtually no health-services research in Canada. No avenue for training young investigators, which already existed for research in the basic and clinical sciences, had been developed 30 years ago. Today there is a comprehensive research and training program that has been internationally recognized and emulated.
The event at Queen's was attended by most of the current NHRDP award holders. One of them, Dr. Stephanie Strathdee, epitomizes NHRDP achievements. In a passionate and personal address, she pointed to the early support she received as an master's student at the University of Toronto and to the current partial support she receives as an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.
In 2001, NHRDP funding for research and training will be just one of several functions of the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR, www.cihr.ca). It will bring researchers from different disciplines together in topic-specific virtual institutes. The result will be researchers from widely different disciplines — molecular medicine and political science is one example — coming together in the same institute. (For a full list of CIHR institutes, see page 254.)
Those attending the conference applauded Health Canada for its work but at the same time vented their concerns about CIHR's ability to maintain and further develop health-services research in Canada.
The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation used the occasion to reveal the winners of its first annual Health Services Research Advancement Award. Dr. David Naylor, dean of medicine at the University of Toronto, was named first recipient because of his longstanding efforts to advance health-services research and training. Meanwhile, Drs. Richard Lessard and Denis Roy accepted an award on behalf of the Direction de la santé publique of the Régie régionale de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal-centre for their attempts to bring scientific evidence into the planning of health services in greater Montreal. — John Hoey, CMAJ
Copyright 2001 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors |
