UNB Research

Thanks to renewed funding, the University of New Brunswick’s (UNB) Centre for Research in Integrated Care (CRIC) will continue to be the New Brunswick node of the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Canadian Primary Care Research Network (CPCRN).

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research has provided $10 million in funding over the next five years to the CPRCN. Partner organizations across Canada, including the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation, matched the funding for a total of over $20 million in support.

“This funding will enable us to continue our research in primary and integrated care innovation in New Brunswick, across Canada and internationally,” said Dr. Shelley Doucet, director of CRIC, professor of nursing and Jarislowsky Chair in Interprofessional Patient-Centred Care. “In addition, it will support the creation of practice-based research networks within New Brunswick, which will facilitate the spread and scale of research in New Brunswick and across Canada.”

The SPOR CPCRN is an established pan-Canadian network of people who collaborate across disciplines and sectors to create innovations in primary health-care delivery. With this renewed funding, CPRCN will expand patient-oriented primary care innovations to new sites, settings and populations.

The PRCN seeks to create a sustainable pan-Canadian health-care learning platform supported by patient-oriented, practice-based research to improve patient and provider experiences in delivering and receiving care and supporting a more sustainable health-care system.

One such project, the OECD Patient Reported Indicators Survey, involves 18 countries and 10 Canadian provinces. It aims to collect data from primary care providers and patients on key health outcomes and experiences for people with chronic conditions. The research results will highlight how these vary across communities and enable decision-makers to learn from this range of approaches to improve primary care services for people living with chronic conditions.

“We are grateful to our funders, particularly CIHR and NBHRF, for their continued support, and we look forward to working to achieve the Network’s new vision, mission and new objectives over the next five years,” added Doucet.