Planning and dissemination – Institute/Initiative Community Support (ICS)

Description

The Planning and Dissemination Grants are intended to provide support for planning and/or dissemination activities (either virtual or in-person) consistent with the mandate of CIHR and relevant to the Institute of Genetics.

Events/activities may focus on, but are not limited to, the following:

Planning

  • Activities that assist potential teams of researchers, knowledge-users and/or partners in working together to identify research questions or emerging issues and priorities that could form the basis of a grant application.
  • Stakeholder consultations, including citizen engagement activities regarding needs, gaps and opportunities in the health research landscape, priority policy issues and/or priority research questions, where such common understanding is currently lacking or requires further development.
  • Initial planning and discussion of a research project among potential team members, including researchers, knowledge-users and/or partners to assess the viability of the research project and the partnership.
  • Conducting an environmental scan or preliminary synthesis of relevant literature, activities or programs.
  • Early-stage planning to determine possible commercial viability of a discovery.
  • Opportunities for knowledge exchange involving stakeholder linkages to inform practice, care, and/or policy that could potentially lead to an application to a funding opportunity.
  • Gatherings of partners, health researchers, and/or knowledge-users where the main objective is to facilitate regional/national and/or international collaboration among individuals or groups from a variety of backgrounds (ex., building new and existing multi-sectored partnerships that include a significant number of participants from outside the conventional scientific community, consensus meetings, networking and partnership development events) interested in applying to a funding opportunity.

Dissemination

  • Education of groups, such as patients, health professionals, community organizations, policy makers, and the public.
  • Knowledge dissemination that will inform practice, clinical care, partnership best practices, policy and decision making.
  • Dissemination and/or discussion of research findings at scientific meetings, workshops, conferences, congresses or symposia.
  • Development and dissemination of knowledge translation products and tools (e.g., written materials in various formats, plain language summaries, decision support tools, educational materials, and web sites).

Allowable costs include support for patient attendance and travel for events. Any activities related to making an event Patients Included (Patients Included website) are also allowed. Learn more about developing patient-inclusive events with this example from the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) 40th Annual Meeting website.

Two annual competitions are scheduled in January and July, offering a total of $60,000 in funding for applications relevant to IG. Visit the ResearchNet website regularly to find out more information about the competition by searching “Planning and Dissemination Grants”.

Featured ICS funded projects

  • End of grant development of Knowledge Mobilization (KM) activities

    The GenCOUNSEL group organized an event to share their research outcomes with a diverse audience, including the public, patients, health care providers, health policy experts, and other researchers. GenCOUNSEL is one of the 2017 Large-Scale Applied Research Project aimed to determine the best approaches for providing genetic counseling for genome-wide sequencing, a type of genetic testing that examines an individual's entire genetic material at once.

    Genetic counseling plays a crucial role in this testing process, serving as a mandatory requirement. It facilitates a communication process that empowers patients and their families to understand the cause of genetic conditions and navigate the emotional aspects associated with them. By providing this support, genetic counselling enables individuals to make informed decisions regarding genetic testing, treatment options, screening procedures, and family planning.

    The ICS funding allowed the funded team to host the “GenCOUNSEL connect: bridging patients to practice, profession, and policy” symposium. The event provided a space for researchers, patients, members of the public and healthcare professionals to showcase different projects and interests within GenCOUNSEL.

    All the presentations are available to watch at this link: GenCOUNSEL Connect 2023

  • Activities to Foster National and International Collaboration

    The CEEHRC Network organized an Annual General Meeting, providing opportunities for potential new collaborations between Canada and Japan. A special joint Canada-Japan session was held, inviting project awardees from a CEEHRC Team Grant competition to showcase their research. This collaborative dialogue aims to strengthen international ties, bridge the gap between bench and bedside in epigenetics research within Canada, and leverage enhanced knowledge of epigenetic mechanisms.

  • Establishment of National Collaboration and Disease-Specific Advocacy Groups

    A team of researchers from the Hospital for Sick Children has organized two sets of meetings to discuss strategies for implementing a genetic technology-based approach to improve the diagnosis of patients affected by systemic inflammatory diseases. The first meeting aims to form a group of clinicians and researchers who will serve as clinical champions in identifying these patients across Canada. Subsequently, an in-person meeting was planned to develop a genomic pipeline that will enable next-generation sequencing of patients throughout the country.

  • Workshops and Hands-on Training to build capacity and strengthen the community

    The Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops (CBW) organized a series of workshops to share its leading-edge bioinformatics knowledge and skills with health researchers and trainees across Canada. The series featured hands-on workshops designed to guide researchers through key bioinformatics concepts and tools required to analyze the large datasets generated by advancing high-throughput sequencing technologies. This program has been shown to enhance the informatic skill set of the research community in Canada, thereby equipping researchers with the expertise needed for data analysis and enabling translational research and personalized therapy discoveries.

    The Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders (CORD) held a conference to mobilize diverse stakeholders including researchers, clinicians, industry, and patient advocacy representatives. The conference was focused on highlighting the achievements in rare disease research and articulating the next steps in the field. In addition, one of the key goals was to create a guiding framework to map current resources, define gaps, identify opportunities and challenges, and prioritize needs in rare disease research.

  • Engaging the Public in Genomics Research at the Canada Science and Technology Museum

    A research group at McGill University has taken a creative approach to promote public engagement and understanding of genomics research. They have integrated their citizen science video game, Phylo, into the permanent exhibition of the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. The group aimed to spark the public’s curiosity of genes and how they impact our health, as well as explore the potential uses of genomics research, including the adoption of precision medicine.

    In addition to the exhibition, they organized a youth-oriented event that featured presentations by Canadian philosophers and genomics researchers. This event sought to increase understanding of genomics research and encourage meaningful engagement with the public, particularly among young individuals.

  • Multi-Stakeholder Workshop to Establish Patient-Oriented Disease Registries

    Canadian PKU and Allied Disorders Inc. organized a multi-stakeholder workshop that brought together a broad group of participants, including patients, caregivers, health care providers, researchers, government health agencies, and industry partners. The workshop focused on discussing the next steps of two patient-oriented disease registries for mucopolysaccharidoses (MPSs) and phenylketonuria (PKU).

  • Patient-inclusive event development

    The Loeys-Dietz Syndrome Foundation Canada is supporting the establishment of the CANadian Aortopathy and Connective Tissue Disorders Registry (CAN-ACT) to gain knowledge of Heritable syndromic aortopathies in the pediatric Canadian population. They ensure that Patient Partnership is at the core of its activities and programs, including the CAN-ACT registry. With the CIHR funding through the Planning and Dissemination grant, they will coordinate a national meeting with patient partners and aortopathy experts to validate and refine the CAN-ACT datasets, validate patient questionnaires, and identify patient-oriented research questions.

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