| CIHR Institutes |
| IHDCYH Home |
| About IHDCYH |
| IHDCYH Funding |
| IHDCYH Publications & Resources |
| Strategic Plan |
| Annual Reports |
| Newsletter |
| Archived News |
| IHDCYH Calendar of Events |
| Contact IHDCYH |
For more information please contact:
CIHR - Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health
The Montreal Children's Hospital
Les Tourelles, T - 118
2300 Tupper Street
Montreal, Quebec H3H 1P3
Tel.: (514) 412-4414
Fax: (514) 412-4253
IHDCYH-IDSEA@cihr-irsc.gc.ca
ISBN: 0-97-31037-7-9
When the Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health (IHDCYH) was created as one of CIHR's 13 founding Institutes in 2001, it was recognized that its mandate, which focused on a key period of the life cycle, differed substantially from those of the more disease-focused Institutes. This difference created both challenges and opportunities. The major challenges related to the Institute's extremely broad domain comprising all organ systems and both the physiologic and psychologic aspects of health and disease, and to the rapidly changing developmental landscape spanning fertility, embryonic and fetal development, pregnancy, birth, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The opportunities arise through overlapping mandates and partnerships with IHDCYH's sister Institutes and with Canada's many research, policy, governmental and voluntary organizations interested in the health of mothers and children. Examples of the opportunities seized thus far include such major health issues as genomic aspects of embryonic and fetal development; childhood asthma, obesity, neurobehavioural development, tobacco addiction, and palliative care, as well as maternal and child health disparities.
IHDCYH has chosen to concentrated its strategic initiatives in a few, large multidisciplinary Requests for Applications (RFAs). These RFAs are truly strategic, in that their scope (in terms of the variety of areas of research and disciplines) and size (in dollars) are difficult or impossible to fund under CIHR's traditional operating grants mechanism. They are also strategic in capitalizing on subject areas that are not only important in the country, while building further for the health of Canada's mothers and children but that also take advantage of existing scientific strengths, capacity for the kind of research the will be required in the future.
IHDCYH has been one of CIHR's most active Institutes in the international arena. In addition to RFAs and summer training institutes carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Health's (NIH's) Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), IHDCYH has been one of three CIHR Institutes to participate in CIHR's collaborative grants program with Japan and will also participate in CIHR's upcoming mission aimed at establishing similar collaborative links with China. The Institute has also actively supported maternal and child health research in developing countries as part of CIHR's Global Health Research Initiative.
Finally, IHDCYH has been in the lead in planning future cohort studies currently under discussion by CIHR and several of its federal partners. IHDCYH's upcoming launch of a major new pregnancy/birth cohort study to examine the etiologic roles of genes and indoor environmental exposures is a model of the type of large-scale initiative that should play a major role in creating and applying knowledge to benefit the health of future mothers and children in Canada and around the world.
I would like to thank Dr. Michael Kramer, IHDCYH's Montreal- and Ottawa-based staff, its Institute Advisory Board (IAB) members, and affiliated researchers across the country for helping to instill this Institute with vision, innovation, and leadership.
Dr. Alan Bernstein, O.C., FRSC
President, CIHR
2004-05 marked the first full year of IHDCYH's home at McGill University and the Montreal Children's Hospital and its full complement of staff both at the Institute's home and in Ottawa. Anne-Cécile Desfaits had been the Assistant Director of the Institute of Aging, based in Sherbrooke, and IHDCYH was lucky indeed to be able to recruit a person of her experience and with her knowledge of CIHR's policies and procedures. She easily made the transition from one end of the age spectrum to the other. Louise Poulin was recruited from the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program to become IHDCYH's Ottawa-based Assistant Director for Partnerships and International Relations. She was joined half-time by Gwendoline Simard, as project officer who had previously worked with IHDCYH under the former Health & Environment cross-cutting initiative. With this excellent staff in place in both Montreal and Ottawa, IHDCYH made major new strides in establishing two joint (with NICHD in the U.S.) summer training institutes and in launching or planning new RFAs in ethics research and a pregnancy/birth cohort to study the roles of genes and the indoor environment in the etiology of asthma and allergiy in early childhood. We also strengthened existing partnerships and developed new ones within and outside the CIHR family in a collaborative effort to fill our broad mandate, and took initial steps toward a new strategic vision for IHDCYH's next five years. With the transition now behind us and a bright new future before, IHDCYH is poised to lead the country in creating and applying new knowledge for the improved health of Canada's mothers and children.
Dr. Michael S. Kramer
Scientific Director, IHDCYH
The Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health (IHDCYH) promotes and supports the creation and application of knowledge that contributes to the improvement of the health of children, youth, and mothers in Canada and in the rest of the world.
In June 2003, IHDCYH launched a Request for Applications (RFA) on Healthy Developmental Trajectories of Infants, Children, and Youth in partnership with CIHR Institutes of Gender and Health (IGH), Neurosciences, Mental Health, and Addiction (INMHA), Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes (INMD), and Population and Public Health (IPPH) and the US-based National Alliance for Autism Research. The objective of the RFA was to investigate the interplay between biological, psychosocial, environmental, and cultural influences and how the interactions among them shape the cognitive and behavioural development of infants, children, and youth. In August 2004, three projects were accepted for funding (see Table below) for a total of $6 million over 5 years.
| Principal Applicant | Grant title |
|---|---|
| Richard E. Tremblay University of Montreal |
Understanding and fostering healthy developmental trajectories: A multidimensional, longitudinal, and experimental approach |
| Peter Szatmari McMaster University |
Autism spectrum disorders: Pathways to better outcomes |
| Jennifer M. Jenkins University of Toronto |
Transactional processes in the development of emotional-behavioral regulation: Individuals in context |
In June 2004, the Institute launched a second RFA on Healthy Pregnancy to increase research funding in this area. After review of the letters of letters of intent, four applicants were invited to submit a full proposal. Results of this competition will be available in the fall of 2005.
In collaboration with CIHR's Ethics Office, IHDCYH launched an RFA in December 2004 entitled "Empirical and Conceptual Research on Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in Studies Involving Pregnant Women and Children." It is expected that empirical research will lead to a better understanding of current practices in research involving pregnant women and children and that conceptual research will help develop/refine relevant standards and establish a normative framework, to protect pregnant women and children who participate in research, especially in longitudinal studies. Results of this competition will be available in the fall of 2005.
In 2004-05, IHDCYH co-funded research and New Emerging Team (NET) grants in areas of strategic importance through RFAs led by other Institutes, including research grants for the RFAs "Facing our Future: Human Genetics, Ethics, Law and Society" (Institute of Genetics, IG), "New Perspectives on Gender an Health" (IGH), and "Childhood Obesity" (INMD), and NET grants for the Palliative and End-of-Life care RFA (Institute of Cancer Research, ICR) and the Rural and Northern Health Research Initiative.
In 2004-05, IHDCYH continued to fund various interdisciplinary strategic grants from past RFAs: three grants from our RFA on Healthy Gametes and Great Embryos, for a total of $1,698,290, and one grant from our first RFA on Healthy Pregnancy, for a total of $660,000.
In partnership with other CIHR Institutes, IHDCYH also provided $604,465 to ten NETs covering many areas of the Institute's mandate.
Since its inception, IHDCYH has been committed to building capacity through effective training programs and salary awards to further strengthen research that relates to its mandate. Over the past year, the Institute has focused on supporting new investigators in the field of reproductive and child health.
In 2004-05, IHDCYH awarded 10 start-up grants, for a total of $780,569, to provide first-year operating support to IHDCYH-affiliated new investigators through CIHR's Priority Announcements (see table 2 below). These new investigators were highly rated in the March or September 2004 CIHR open grants competition, but were just below the threshold for funding. The criteria for "new" included one criteria based on time since completing research training (less than six years) and a second excluding those with Principal Investigator status on one or more previous CIHR operating grants. It is expected that this targeted investment will lead to increased success rate for new investigators in future CIHR regular open competitions and in competitions for operating grants from other agencies.
| Principal Applicant | Grant title |
|---|---|
| Christine T. McCusker Meakins Christie Labs (McGill University) |
Impact of local antigenic stimulation in the neonatal period on development of allergic rhinitis and asthma |
| Cameron D. Skinner Concordia University |
A mICRo-immunoassay to measure components of amniotic fluid associated with fetal growth and growth abnormalities |
| Fay F. Warnock British Columbia's Children Hospital |
Behavior of the newborn infant: Pain, distress and caregiving influences |
| Principal Applicant | Grant title |
| F. Jeff Dilworth Ottawa Health Research Institute |
Elucidating the mechanisms directing temporally ordered gene expression by myoD |
| Deda C. Gillespie McMaster University |
Mechanisms of circuit development in the auditory system |
| Danielle Groleau Sir Mortimer B.Davis Jewish General Hospital |
Sociocultural determinants of hyperemesis gravidarum: From ethnographic film to clinical and community-based changes |
| Tammy L. Ivanco University of Manitoba |
Investigating autism: evaluating fragile X mental retardation syndrome and developmental teratogen exposure as risk factors |
| Vincent Joseph Université Laval |
Direct control of carotid body development by estradiol? |
| Jennifer M. Medves Queen's University |
What factors influence rural women's' choices: Giving birth in rural Alberta and Ontario |
| Glen S. Vanarsdell Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto) |
Analysis of the mechanisms of altered systemic and cerebral oxygen transport in children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome |
Over the past year, IHDCYH co-funded training and salary awards through RFAs led by other Institutes such as a New Investigator Award in Aboriginal Health (Institute of Aboriginal People's health, IAPH), and a Doctoral Research Award in the INMD's Target Obesity RFA.
The Institute provided ongoing funds ($1,143,508 in 2004-05) to 11 Strategic Training Initiatives in Health Research within its research mandate.
The Institute also continued its collaboration with the Hospital for Sick Children Foundation (HSCF, Toronto) through the New Investigator Grant Program. This program aims to build capacity among new child health researchers to compete in future for grants from CIHR and other funding agencies. In 2004-05, IHDCYH and HSCF co-funded 17 new investigators across Canada, for a total of $2,195,187 over 2 years.
In partnership with the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network (CLLRNet), IHDCYH invested $100,000 in knowledge translation research initiatives to improve language and literacy skills of Canadian children by using research evidence to influence policies, programs, and practices.
Through its workshop program, IHDCYH also funded 35 multidisciplinary and cross-cutting workshops related to its research priorities, for a total of $245,195 in 2004-05. Funded workshops include:
The development of new partnerships and collaborations has increased over the past year. IHDCYH fostered partnerships in research planning and funding with other CIHR Institutes, national organizations, and its "sister" Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
In 2004-05, IHDCYH partnered with a number of CIHR Institutes to fund various research grants and salary awards. The initiatives include:
Since its inception, IHDCYH has championed health and environment issues affecting children. In 2004-05, the Institute actively planned and developed with multiple partners (see list below) an RFA for a pregnancy/birth cohort study aimed to advance knowledge about the etiology of childhood asthma and allergy, particularly the roles of indoor environments, genes, and the interactions of genes with indoor and other environmental exposures (launch scheduled in June 05).
List of partners for the RFA on the etiology of asthma and allergy on early childhood:
The Institute planned and led the development of two joint IHDCYH-NICHD Summer Institutes: one in Reproductive & Perinatal Epidemiology and a second in Maternal-Fetal Pharmacology (both to be held in July 2005). The Summer Institute in Reproductive & Perinatal Epidemiology is an intensive one-week course providing PhD students with both substantive and methodological training. The Summer Institute in Maternal-Fetal Pharmacology will train clinical and nonclinical scientists considering academic careers in therapeutics during pregnancy and lactation. The overall objective of both Summer Institutes is to foster the development of a critical mass of Canadian and American researchers in these strategic domains.
In collaboration with INMHA and the Institute of Aging (IA), IHDCYH actively participated in the JSPS-CIHR Joint Health Research Program. The program, established in 2003, is jointly managed and funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and CIHR. Its aim is to promote Japanese-Canadian research collaboration between universities or affiliated research organizations in Japan and Canada through the support of small project grants. A second call for proposals was launched in the fall of 2004 and the results of the competition will be available in April 2005.
Under the leadership of the NIH (the National Institute of Mental Health and NICHD), IHDCYH, INMHA, and IG launched a joint RFA in December 2004 to solicit applications to identify specific genes and gene variants in localized chromosomal regions that confer susceptibility to autism. Results of this competition will be available in the fall of 2005.
In partnership with IG, IPPH, IA, and ICR, IHDCYH has been actively involved in discussing a Canadian National Cohort Initiative comprising one or more long-term cohort studies of child health, healthy aging, and cancer. An international advisory panel and key Canadian investigators from IHDCYH and the other participating Institutes will be held in Toronto in December 2005 to identify the most important, feasible, and affordable scientific niche that Canadian national cohort studies should attempt to fill.
Note: A complete list of funded grants and awards, as well as workshops is available on the Institute's website.
Michael Kramer has been the Scientific Director of IHDCYH since May 2003. The IHDCYH official opening was held in November 2004, in conjunction with the funding announcement of $6 million under our Healthy Developmental Trajectories RFA. The opening provided another opportunity for IHDCYH staff to meet with researchers and stakeholders in the Montreal area.
The Institute Advisory Board (IAB) includes 16 members from the reproductive and child health research community, voluntary sector, health care system, and governmental agencies. Bruce Murphy has served as Chair since April 2004. The IAB supports and advises the Institute's Directorate on strategic priorities and orientations. During face-to-face meetings held in April (Halifax) and September (Toronto) 2004, Institute staff and IAB members met with local researchers and partners to reinforce links with the local reproductive and child health research communities and to garner feedback about the Institute's past activities and future plans.
In September 2004, the Institute Directorate and IAB members decided that a new strategic plan was necessary to map the Institute's course over the next five years. In early 2005, a working plan outlining future steps was developed, and IHDCYH's new strategic plan is expected for early 2006.
For the year ended March 31, 2005
| Available Funds
|
|
$1,000,000
|
| Expenses | ||
| Institute Development | ||
| Conference, symposia and workshops | $258,766 | |
| Institute Advisory Board | 42,336 | |
| Professional services | 11,805 | |
| Travel Expenditures | 10,509
|
$323,417 |
| Institute Operations | ||
| Salaries and benefits | $393,777 | |
| Office accomodations | 16,441 | |
| Telephone and communication services | 6,363 | |
| Supplies, material and other services | 6,550 | |
| Office furniture and fixtures | 19,007 | |
| Computer equipment and IT support | 19,059 | |
| Professional services | 6,915 | |
| Travel expenditures | 30,800 | |
| Other expenditures | 1,272
|
$500,183 |
| Total Expenses
|
|
$823,599
|
| Unspent Balance* | $176,401 |
* Note : The balance as at March 31, 2005 is carried forward to the subsequent fiscal year
For the year ended March 31, 2005
| Strategic Initiatives | Number | Contributions through Grants and Awards ($) | ||||
| 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007 and beyond |
Total | ||
| Healthy Gametes & Great Embryos | 3 | 1,698,290 | 1,698,290 | 1,698,290 | 1,273,719 | 6,368,589 |
| Healthy Pregnancy | 1 | 660,900 | 650,000 | 650,000 | 800,000 | 2,760,900 |
| Healthy Developmental Trajectories | 3 | 502,231 | 710,074 | 828,265 | 1,913,596 | 3,954,166 |
| Operating Grants | 10 | 780,548 | - | - | - | 780,548 |
| New Emerging Teams | 10 | 604,465 | 703,041 | 642,349 | 28,673 | 1,978,528 |
| CIHR Training Program Grants | 7 | 852,948 | 1,318,335 | 1,318,334 | 1,559,089 | 5,048,706 |
| Rural Health | 1 | 100,000 | - | - | - | 100,000 |
| New Researchers - Aboriginal Health | 1 | 17,175 | - | - | - | 17,175 |
| New Perpectives - Gender and Health | 3 | 96,499 | - | - | - | 96,499 |
| Gene Therapy - Neuro Diseases | 1 | 50,000 | 50,000 | - | - | 100,000 |
| Palliative End of Life Care | 1 | 140,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 | 460,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Facing our Future - Human Genetics | 2 | 25,980 | - | - | - | 25,980 |
| Target Obesity | 1 | 12,925 | 18,333 | 18,333 | 4,383 | 53,974 |
| Childhood Obesity | 1 | - | 99,670 | 99,255 | 100,000 | 298,925 |
| Tobacco | 2 | 279,322 | - | - | - | 279,322 |
| Hospital for Sick Children Foundation | 1 | 900,000 | - | - | - | 900,000 |
| Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network |
1 | 100,000 | - | - | - | 100,000 |
| 49 | 6,821,283 | 5,447,743 | 5,454,826 | 6,139,460 | 23,863,312 | |
Note : Grants and awards in respect to these programs are approved for 1 to 6 years. Figures displayed represent financial commitments for these programs in 2004-05 and subsequent years. Availability of these funds in future years are subject to funding appropriations by Parliament. For some initiatives, partners also contributed to the funding of the grants and awards.
