Grant: POR Awards - Transition to Leadership Stream - Phase 2

This award supports the launch of my independent patient-oriented research career. It does this by enabling me to develop a research program aimed at answering the following over-arching research questions: (a) what are approaches to increasing patient-oriented research capacity at the individual, interpersonal, and systems levels, and (b) how can patient-oriented research approaches be applied to transforming healthcare interventions and services to better reflect patient and caregiver identified priorities and outcomes and have long-standing impacts that matter to patients and their caregivers? To begin to address these research questions, I propose three independent studies, two of which were conceptualized and developed in collaboration with patient partners and build off my prior patient-oriented work. The first engages patient partners and academic researchers from across Canada in a participatory process aimed at identifying key research questions and actionable next steps for patient engagement in research in Canada. The second sets out to co-develop and test a peer support group for patients undergoing cardiac surgery and their caregivers at St. Boniface Hospital (Winnipeg, Manitoba). The third aims to describe Manitoban patient, caregiver, and healthcare provider priorities within key areas of primary care. All three studies focus on patient-driven priorities and outcomes and are carried out with interdisciplinary teams of academic researchers, healthcare providers, and patient partners that are individual members of the core research team and/or part of a collective of advisory panel members. Through these studies, my research program has the potential to significantly impact individual and population health and well-being both directly, through the development of more effective health services, and indirectly by identifying multi-level strategies to increase patient-oriented research capacity throughout Canada.