Grant: Planning Grants - Priority Announcement: Aging

Access to appropriate community-based primary healthcare (CBPHC) is fundamental to the health of older people, especially those living in Canada's under-serviced and rapidly aging rural areas. To inform research, policy and practice on this topic, funding is requested to develop a 2012 CBPHC Team Grant application in Rural Primary Healthcare for Older People. Featuring a multi-disciplinary team of leading health researchers, policy decision-makers and providers from across Canada, the team grant will address critical gaps in knowledge, research capacity and policy on primary healthcare for vulnerable older rural people. It will contribute directly the CIHR research priority areas in 'access to appropriate community-based primary healthcare for vulnerable populations' (IHSPR) and 'health services and policy relating to older people' (IA). The planning grant will be used to bring together established researchers and professional leaders in primary care, aging and health services for a planning meeting at Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) in early December 2011. The meeting will involve a state of knowledge review of CBPHC as it relates to healthy rural aging; prioritization of key themes to inform primary healthcare policy and practice in rural areas; and conceptualization and design of a five-year multi-disciplinary, multi-provincial and multi-site CBPHC research program. The meeting will provide the foundation for submitting a team grant application in winter 2012. Funding is also requested for a follow-up grant writing meeting in early January 2012 and a part-time graduate research assistant to prepare an environmental scan and provide administrative support for the planning meeting and grant writing. Ultimately, the new CBPHC Team in Rural Primary Healthcare for Older People will contribute to actualizing the potential of the evolving primary healthcare system for increasing the availability of and accessibility to primary care for older rural Canadians.