Grant: Fellowship: POR Awards - Transition to Leadership Stream - Phase 1

The roles of patients and the public in the healthcare system are currently undergoing fundamental changes. No longer simply the passive recipients of care, patients and communities are increasingly seen as a transformative force in adapting healthcare services to the needs of today. This marked enthusiasm has translated to policy and funding initiatives for patient and public engagement in research, quality improvement, and healthcare governance. However, applying patient and community partnership principles requires researchers and decision-makers to more clearly understand how productive partnerships take shape for this promising, potentially transformative, approach to realize its potential. My research aims to evaluate the design, implementation and transferability of three partnership interventions in Montreal. As three distinct cases, with variations in team composition, origins of intervention models, funding sources, boroughs of implementation, and stages of realisation they provide a timely opportunity to evaluate partnership interventions as they occur in real-world settings. My research aims to answer the following questions: what key ingredients are needed for patients, care providers and researchers to work productively together to envision and create health interventions; are these same key ingredients applicable and useful to consider when implementing interventions; and finally, do these key ingredients transfer to other, emerging, partnership projects? The three partnership projects include: Caring Community (social isolation), Compassionate Communities (palliative care), and Community Links (HIV care). My research will be conducted using an internationally recognized developmental evaluation approach. In sum, this research aims to learn from the three interventions to strengthen our collective capacity to envision, plan, and conduct patient and community partnership projects with the ultimate goals of improving the care, and health of Canadians.