Grant: Planning Grants - PA: Health Services and Systems for an Aging Population

We propose a three-day interactive face-to-face meeting in Victoria, British Columbia (BC) on 3-5 June 2013 to establish partnerships and collaboratively develop a research program to improve residential long term care (LTC) facilities in BC. This will be the first step in an ongoing integrated knowledge translation process. Our team consists of three local knowledge users, thirteen (local, national and international) researchers, eight regional policy/decision-makers, and four (local and international) students/trainees. The expected primary outcome of the proposed event is the development and submission of a collaborative grant proposal in implementing system and caregiver intervention(s) to improve quality of life of older adults living in LTC facilities. However during the meeting, we will discuss and finalize the definite topic of the grant proposal. The specific knowledge translation products from this meeting include a) a manuscript for publication, based on participants' experiences/challenges of the three-day meeting in collaboratively initiating a research program, b) engagement with knowledge users that ensures the focus of the grant proposal is relevant to knowledge users' interests and, in turn, increases the likelihood the findings will be integrated into practice, c) trainees/students development that will consist of reports to the team, based on their notes and reflections on discussions, d) a succinct nontechnical paper on decisions, plans, and recommendations for future research that will be developed and disseminated to the event participants, and e) website links will be posted in our professional websites referring to the published article and information pertaining to the face-to-face meeting. Social media (password-protected) application (e.g., blog, wiki) will be initiated to keep track of our interactive dialogue and the progress of the collaborative grant proposal writing. A trained student will post updates on our activities bi-weekly.