This project is funded via the Research on Research Joint Initiative, which is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and Michael Smith Health Research BC. The ERGO-Impact project is a pan-Canadian project with research activities based in British Columbia.
About the team: The ERGO-Impact project is led by Dr Clare Ardern, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at The University of British Columbia, who specializes in musculoskeletal health research and evidence synthesis. Dr Ardern works with an experienced team of Canadian and international experts in research policy, open science, and machine learning.
The research issue: Getting research funding is critical for scientific progress, but biases in grant review can disadvantage early-career researchers. To address this, CIHR introduced an “equalization” policy in 2016 to ensure fairer funding for early-career researchers. We don’t yet know if this policy has improved equity or influenced the types of research being done.
The research approach: Our team is studying how equalization has shaped Canadian health research. We analyze thousands of funded projects to see if the range of research topics has broadened and whether open science practices—like sharing data and publishing open access—have increased. We will also survey and interview researchers to understand how research funding policies affect their work.
Impact for BC: This research will help funders and policymakers design fairer systems that support all researchers to do high quality research. By delivering equity and improving transparency in how research is done (open science practices), we aim to strengthen the quality and impact of health research in BC and across Canada.
Additional Partner(s):
- Fancy Poitras – Providence Health Care
- Krista Stelkia – Simon Fraser University
- Sarah de Leeuw – University of Northern British Columbia
- Judy Sturm – BC Centre for Disease Control
- Teresa Tsang – Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute
This project investigates how research standards and governance models shape health research in urban Indigenous contexts, focusing on engagement, data sovereignty, and knowledge translation. Urban Indigenous Peoples make up the majority of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, yet often experience systemic exclusion from research, constraining their ability to define and govern the production of knowledge about their own communities. While frameworks like OCAP® and TCPS2 Chapter 9 have advanced ethical practices for research involving Indigenous communities, their emphasis on nation-based governance structures do not adequately account for the complex realities of urban Indigenous populations and organizations. Using Indigenous Research Methodologies and Community-Based Participatory Action Research, this study explores how research standards, evaluation metrics, and funding structures can better reflect the realities of urban Indigenous Peoples in BC.
Led by Dr. Gabrielle Legault in collaboration with Dr. Peter Hutchinson, Dr. Shawn Wilson, Dr. Alanaise Ferguson, Dr. Skye Barbic, and Lindsay DuPré, and engaging Indigenous and non-Indigenous health organizations in BC, this project identifies barriers and opportunities for ethical and culturally grounded research in partnership with urban Indigenous communities. Guided by an Urban Indigenous Research Advisory Circle and using a scoping review, surveys, interviews, and sharing circles, this project examines how existing research governance and data management practices can be adapted to support urban Indigenous research. Anticipated outcomes include a toolkit and academic publications for broad accessibility and impact across research, health, and policy sectors.
Funded through the Research on Research Joint Initiative—a collaboration between the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Michael Smith Health Research BC—this work seeks to inform shifts in research governance that uphold Indigenous self-determination, ensuring the meaning inclusion of urban Indigenous perspectives in the future of health research.
Grants from public funders are critical for biomedical innovation, yet evidence shows that much funding is wasted on research that does not change clinical practice and offers little benefit to patients. Even when innovations have potential, many fail to be adopted by health insurers because they lack strong evidence of value for patient health and cost-effectiveness. Funders increasingly ask for research impact assessments, but methods to estimate health and economic benefits early in development are not well developed.
This project will create and test a practical framework to help researchers and funding agencies estimate the potential impact of early-stage therapeutic technologies. We will focus on projects developing treatments for specific patient populations in early clinical trials.
Our work has four steps. First, we will review existing tools to identify indicators of health, economic, and societal benefits. Based on this, we will create a streamlined version of our early health technology assessment Indication Assessment Framework, enabling researchers to assess potential impact in about one day per indication. Second, we will test the framework on a sample of Canadian therapeutic projects funded between 2017 and 2019. We will evaluate whether it identifies projects with high potential impact and explore how early estimates relate to outcomes six years later, such as clinical trials, patents, or commercialization. Third, we will develop an Implementation Checklist and data template to make the framework easy to use. Finally, we will share the framework widely through webinars and video tutorials, engaging research funders.
This project is funded by the Research on Research Joint Initiative, a collaborative grant program funded by SSHRC, CIHR, and Michael Smith Health Research BC. It will be conducted by the University of British Columbia early health technology assessment team. The team will be led by Dr. Mark Harrison and Dr. Larry Lynd, who specialize in adapting methods from health economics, epidemiology, and health technology assessment to support development of new health care technologies like drugs.
This BC-based project, funded through the Research on Research Initiative (RORI) with support from Health Research BC, explores how involving diverse voices in health policy modelling can improve decision-making. The Principal Investigator, Dr. Kate Johnson, is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia specializing in health economics and simulation modelling. She leads a team of experts in philosophy, medicine, and knowledge translation from UBC and international institutions.
Computer simulation models are widely used to guide health policy, but they are often developed by technical experts without input from patients, clinicians, policymakers, or the public. This lack of involvement raises concerns because building these models requires social and ethical judgments that can influence policy outcomes. Our project addresses this gap by studying what happens when transdisciplinary model users—such as patients and decision-makers—are actively involved in developing a policy model for asthma prevention in Canada.
Using the “Lifetime Exposures and Asthma outcomes Projection” (LEAP) model as a case study, we will evaluate how this involvement affects model results, trust in the model, and the perceived value of the process. Findings will help research funders and health systems understand best practices for inclusive modelling, ultimately supporting more transparent, trustworthy, and patient-informed health policies in BC and beyond. This work will strengthen BC’s capacity in cost-effective, patient-centered strategies for asthma prevention.
More info: https://leap.core.ubc.ca
https://www.legacyairwayhealth.ca/
