Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grants - Institute/Initiative Community Support

We will hold a one-day, in-person Think Tank event in Toronto, Ontario about acute stroke care organization in the province. Every 5 minutes, someone in Canada experiences a stroke. Most people with stroke have a blocked brain vessel causing disability and potentially even death. Stroke is treatable with "clot-busting" medications and thrombectomy, an emergency surgery to remove the clot from the brain. Our group did research to see if Ontarians are accessing these treatments. Unfortunately, we found that the Ontario stroke systems of care are currently not optimized for finding which patients might benefit from the clot-removing procedures and the system is not getting patients quickly to the right stroke hospitals. The BEAT-STROKE Think Tank will bring together doctors from across Ontario, including rural regions, policymakers, health executives, knowledge users, patients to discuss a re-design of the current stroke system. We will also feature presentations from national stroke health system experts so that we can learn from initiatives taking place in other provinces and nationally. This event will be an important first step in bringing change in acute stroke care in Ontario so that people who experience stroke can get the care they need regardless of where they live.