Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

This is the first Canadian Connective Tissue Workshop with themes focused on imparting hands-on training and tools to handle bullying, harassment, and conflicts in the workplace. The workshop aims to build a safe research environment, enhance the performance of the teams conducting musculoskeletal research, and increase compliance with established EDI best practices in the workplace and research design and dissemination. This workplace will be run on May 13th, 2025. The objectives of the event include 1) providing members with tools to identify microaggressions and effectively deal with them, 2) how to deal with witnessing bullying and harassment and come out of bystander mode, 3) how to have effective conflict management dialogues within the research team, and 4) enhance the quality and performance of research teams by promoting a safe and collegial work environment. The Workshop will bring together patients, trainees, scientists, and industry professionals engaged in connective tissue and musculoskeletal research endeavors through panel discussions and interactive elements. We are committed to offering twenty travel awards to assist trainees from across Canada and those from underrepresented groups to attend the Workshop. This is an essential topic in the Canadian research community, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for it among our members. We anticipate a high participation rate and look forward to offering a high-quality, diverse, impactful event.