Partnerships for Purpose
10/20/2022
Mapping the Evidence with Campbell Collaboration
The United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing is a global collaboration focused on improving the lives of older adults, their families, and their communities. In January 2021, the Bruyère Research Institute, the Campbell Collaboration, and the World Health Organization developed a partnership to build the evidence base for healthy ageing.
Evidence maps, which represent a synthesis of the available research, visually show where evidence is strong and where there are gaps, which in turn informs future directions of research.
Under the partnership, researchers began with an evidence map on digital technology to reduce loneliness and social isolation in older adults and have a second map on in-person strategies to mitigate social isolation and loneliness underway.
“Especially over the past two years, we have seen how important social connection is for older adults. Working together to understand social care and social isolation gives us a foundation to make evidence-based change around the world,” said Vivian Welch, PhD, investigator at the Bruyère Research Institute and co-lead on the maps’ development.
These maps, in conjunction with a previously completed map on home-based social and health care, will become a comprehensive source of information for the public, patients and families, as well as program and policy decision-makers.
Patient Partnerships with eConsult
Patients offer insight and perspective, often through their lived experience, that can be integral to research design and eventual evidence adoption. When patients are engaged in the research process, there is not only an opportunity to identify and mitigate challenges and biases, but also the chance to achieve impact for patients, caregivers, and families through relevant findings.
The eConsult research team has been working with patient partners for the past decade, recently building a handbook to support patient engagement and participation. Over the course of the years, many different patients have come to be involved in advisory and steering committees for both grants and projects, the co-design of patient partner tools, grant and manuscript development, and knowledge translation. Many partners have further supported the advancement of research on patient partner engagements and on person-centered care.
“Patient partners are a valued part of the research to practice cycle,” said Dr. Clare Liddy, researcher and co-founder of the eConsultBASE™ platform. “We want to ensure our work is meaningful to the people we serve, and we are incredibly grateful to the people who have given their time to help us move forward in an informed and impactful way.”
Community Engagement with CityStudio Ottawa
Community Safety and Well-Being Plans (CSWBP) are provincially mandated in Ontario and serve as road maps at the municipal level to improve population health by addressing priorities which are closely linked to social determinants of health.
Under a CityStudio model that pairs municipalities with higher education institutions, the City of Ottawa and the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine will work together, leveraging the university’s resources and expertise to address the priorities in Ottawa’s Community Safety and Well-Being Plan and positively impact the community. One of the projects to harness this partnership will look at incorporating data sets from local and national sources to examine housing, one of Ottawa’s six priority areas, to develop indicators that can be used for population health intervention research.
“I feel incredibly excited to bring my perspectives in primary care and health equity to the CSWBP Advisory Committee,” said Dr. Claire Kendall, Associate Dean, Social Accountability with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa and physician-researcher with Bruyère. “Ottawa has always been my home, so I feel especially privileged to be able to contribute to the health of our city with the priorities and voice of the community as central to our shared work.”
This partnership will support the advancement of multiple community health projects through collaborative action between the city, university, and community partners, and is a unique opportunity to evaluate how this engagement model can improve population health outcomes.