Share your study results with the public on REACH BC

25 October 2022

REACH BC is a not-for-profit online provincial platform that matches health research opportunities with potential study participants, across BC. REACH BC is an easy-to-use online recruitment tool and a place to share your study results with the public.

Participants want to hear from you – they want to know the results of the study in which they participated in. Researchers need to ensure they ‘close the loop’ by communicating study results to the participants and the public, as a way to build trust, provide transparency, and show the effectiveness and impact of health research in the health research system.

In 2018, Clinical Trials BC completed the Canadian Clinical Research Participation Survey, a national project that asked participants about their experiences taking part in clinical trials. The survey showed that many participants were left with unanswered questions both during and at the end of the research study.

“I would have liked to have the study follow up to me directly about my results.” “My experience was incredibly disappointing; I never received the study results.” – Study participants

The REACH BC platform provides a central place to share study results with your participants and the public through the searchable REACH BC Directory. REACH BC empowers the volunteers on the platform by providing them with full control over their data, as well as offering them the choice to select which health research categories they are interested in and wish to participate in.

The Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement(1) clearly states that informing participants of the research results is as important as disseminating results to the research community and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research acknowledges that the impact of research on the health care system is directly related to effectively communicating research findings back to knowledge users, including members of the public that may be affected by those findings.

To share your results today, sign-up for your REACH BC Researcher Account here:

REACH BC first launched in April 2020 and is now part of Health Research BC and currently supports researchers in BC employed by a health authority or public post-secondary institution. We have close to 5,000 volunteer participants on the platform and approximately 850 researcher accounts. Email info@reachbc.ca to learn more.

View the Best Practices Online Toolkit for Communicating Results with Clinical Trials Participants: