President's Message
An End of Year Message from the President
It’s hard to believe that another year has gone by and that CIHR is already 2½ years old – half-way towards its five-year birthday. There have been many highlights, many firsts and notable events for CIHR over the past year.
One highlight for me was our first Annual Celebration of Excellence in Research Dinner, held last month in Toronto. The evening was a resounding success attended by approximately 500 people from across Canada, including researchers from over 30 institutions, partners from the health charities, industry, governments and political representatives. This event was tangible evidence of a gathering sense of community in health research that crosses pillar, academic discipline, province and sector. I am already looking forward to next year’s celebration dinner!
Strategic Training Initiative in Health Research
The year 2002 will also be remembered for the $88 million announcement of the first round of the 51 successful applicants of CIHR’s Strategic Training Initiative in Health Research. To me, this initiative exemplifies what CIHR is all about: excellence, multi-disciplinarity, productivity, innovation, young people, inclusivity and partnerships. I would strongly encourage everyone to read just the titles of the 51 successful applications in this first round. These block grants illustrate beautifully the realization of the broad and dynamic vision for CIHR.
CIHR and Public Policy
This past year was also the year that CIHR’s Governing Council issued Guidelines for Research Involving Stem Cells, based on the carefully thought-out recommendations from CIHR’s Working Group on Stem Cells. It is instructive to analyze the strong reactions of some Members of Parliament to the release, suggesting that we were “setting public policy” and “pre-empting the proper role of Parliament”. After some reflection, as well as discussions with many Members of Parliament, I remain convinced that CIHR did the right thing by providing an ethical framework for research that we have been mandated to support. Equally important, we are providing the very best advice to legislators on the research and therapeutic opportunities of stem cells, as well as the ethical and social challenges presented by this new science. That our advice was sound and respected is clearly evidenced by the fact that the Bill on Assisted Human Reproduction currently being considered by Parliament is, where it pertains to stem cells, closely aligned with CIHR’s Guidelines. I also believe that the ‘middle’ position of the Bill and CIHR’s Guidelines – more permissive than those of the US Government, but more restrictive than in the U.K. – accurately reflects the views of the majority of Canadians and is a model for the world.
During the entire discussion on stem cells, I believe that Parliamentarians received the very best advice on our current knowledge on stem cells. Equally important, I believe they appreciated the ability to have confidence in the advice they were receiving.
In short, CIHR was doing what Parliament mandated us to do when it was created to replace the MRC – to be a proactive organization that anticipates new research opportunities, while balancing these research and health opportunities with the diversity of views and values of Canadians.
Also, in this past year, CIHR has been continuing its commitment to catalyze discussion and reflection on complex privacy issues from multiple perspectives. Given the evolution of health information technology and the globalization of health and health research, the need is now greater than ever for harmonized, coherent and workable solutions for respecting Canadians’ right to protection of their personal information, while allowing restricted access to that information by health researchers for improving health, health services and the health system. Here too, public policy has to be supported by real evidence of Canadians’ attitudes regarding the use of their personal information for health research purposes, the implementation of best practices for sharing health information amongst researchers, and strengthened oversight processes and mechanisms.
These experiences illustrate a broader point: from global warming to GMOs, to stem cells and personal health information, research is increasingly impinging on public policy. Governments and our elected representative must make difficult policy decisions that take into account many considerations and priorities. To do this wisely, they need reliable, multi-disciplinary advice from the research community - advice driven by evidence, not by ideology. Who can they trust with confidence and get an objective perspective on GMOs or the health impacts of global warming?
Organizational Design
This year also marked a major (and hopefully, not disruptive to our stakeholders) re-organization of CIHR’s internal structure. The overall goal of the reorganization is to reflect CIHR’s mandate and enable us to realize the broad integrative vision set out for us by Parliament.
As many of you are aware, the redesign included the creation of 4 new Portfolios – Research, Knowledge Translation and Partnerships, Corporate Affairs, and Services and Operations. Four outstanding Vice Presidents - Dr. Mark Bisby, Sonya Corkum, Christine Fitzgerald and Guy D’Aloisio, respectively - have been recruited as of May 2002. CIHR now has a strong, cohesive scientific and management leadership team – 13 Scientific Directors and 4 Vice-Presidents – to move us forward in the coming years.
Karen Mosher, who was MRC’s, and then CIHR’s Executive Director, did a superb job in leading this challenging transition. Karen has moved on to Treasury Board and all of us at CIHR wish Karen the very best.
As part of our reorganization and reflecting the central importance of communications and public awareness/engagement to the CIHR vision, we have embarked on a major strengthening of CIHR’s communications capabilities (which sits within the Corporate Affairs Portfolio). Over the coming weeks and months, you will be hearing a lot more from CIHR.
Innovation and Health Care Reform
Over the past year, there have been 2 parallel, but separate, dialogues going on in this country. The first, led by Minister Allan Rock and Industry Canada, deals with the important issue of how to strengthen Canada’s capacity for innovation. The second deals with the future of health care in Canada, with two separate national studies led by Senator Michael Kirby and The Honorable Roy Romanow, preceded by the Fyke and Manzankowski Reports, from Saskatchewan and Alberta, respectively.
CIHR provided submissions to both the Innovation Agenda and the Romanow Commission (see www.irsc-cihr.gc.ca.). In brief, the thesis of our submissions was that health care reform and the innovation agenda are different sides of the same coin. Canada’s investment in the health system is over $100 billion a year. It is Canada’s largest knowledge-based industry, embracing health professionals, telemedicine, health information, health system management, health economics, genomics and proteomics, biopharmaceuticals, imaging modalities, and much more. Importantly, health and our health system both matter deeply to Canadians and Canada has unique research and other strengths across the health spectrum. Accordingly, we argued that health and health research are keystones of Canada’s Innovation Agenda, a conclusion that I believe has now been widely accepted by Government.
Conversely, in our submissions to both the Kirby and Romanow Commissions, we argued that health research is essential to build an innovative health system for the 21st Century. From the Tsunami wave of the genetics revolution that will shortly hit the shores of the health system, to the need for research to underpin evidence-based changes to health delivery, a robust and well-integrated health research enterprise is key. Accessibility, the challenges of rural, remote and Aboriginal health, patient safety, the growing impact of genetics in the health system, health human resources, health promotion, and new models for delivering primary care, are all examples of pressing issues that require research, and evidence-based innovation.
While there are many differences in both style and substance between the four reports, they all share one thing in common: the importance of health research to the future of the health system. The Kirby and Romanow Reports both explicitly called for CIHR’s budget to increase from its current level of $562 million to $1 billion/year.
As part of our Submission to the Romanow Commission last July, CIHR proposed a new concept – Centres for Health Innovation – that would bring together researchers, caregivers, community and patient groups, industry, policy and decision makers, governments, health charities, and others to foster and disseminate a culture of innovation and evidence-based decision-making across the health system. The Centres concept clearly resonated with the Commission – “… the Commission was struck by the minimal amount of information available on issues as vital as rural and remote health ….. To this end, the Commission recommends that four Centres for Health Innovation for applied policy research should be created as soon as possible by CIHR…” (Building on Values, The Future of Health Care in Canada, Final Report, Page 87).
The Commission recommended that CIHR establish 9 such Centres, in areas ranging from Rural and Remote Health to Genomic and Proteomics. Sonya Corkum, Vice-President of Knowledge Translation and Partnership, will be leading a national consultation to solicit ideas from all sources, to engage stakeholders, and to implement with our partners this innovative approach to knowledge translation and building a health system built on the best evidenced-based research available.
The Evolution of CIHR
2002 marked the coming of age of the 13 Institutes, marked by the completion of all 13 strategic plans and their implementation through the launch of strategic research initiatives that provided many additional opportunities for health researchers. As part of the organizational design, CIHR established a Research Planning and Priorities Committee (RPPC), composed of the Scientific Directors, to help the organization as a whole set its research priorities and advise the Governing Council about the ways in which CIHR should support health researchers in order to realize CIHR’s mandate of improving the health of Canadians. One of the first achievements of the Committee was to select nine “cross-cutting” strategic initiatives in areas such as Rural and Northern health, global health, and regenerative medicine, that will be priorities for CIHR in future years. This process clearly showed the collegiality and cooperation that exists among the 13 Scientific Directors, and that the Institute structure is key to CIHR’s future. I continue to be amazed by the energy, creativity and commitment of the 13 Scientific Directors to health research and to CIHR, and I thank them for their extraordinary support during the past year.
The same remarkable commitment to CIHR is shown by so many, and I thank you all: the members of Institute Advisory Boards for their thoughtful and sound advice to Scientific Directors; the Governing Council members and those who sit on its Standing Committees, who guide CIHR in developing a unique approach to supporting health research; the University Delegates, who provide a vital communications link with the research community; the members of our peer review committees, for their expert and rigorous evaluation of applications for funding; and CIHR’s many partners, who contribute both financially and intellectually to the achievement of our shared goals.
I also want to single out for special thanks the CIHR staff who work with such dedication and commitment to support our efforts throughout the year to sustain Canadian health research.
My final “thank you” is to Canada’s health research community for your imagination, dedication to excellence, and determination to tackle exciting research opportunities and the many health issues that confront Canadians. CIHR’s resolution for the New Year will be, as always, to provide you with the best possible support, so that, working together, you can achieve your research goals and Canada can truly become the ‘place to be’ for health research in the 21st century.
I wish all of you and your families a happy and healthy New Year!
Alan Bernstein, OC, PhD, FRSC
