So happy to announce that myself and a small team at Women's College Hospital have been awarded a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to support three education and capacity building projects involving engagement of people with lived experience (PWLE - also sometimes referred to as "patients") at the hospital.
Following feedback from patient partners, community members and researchers, we identified three areas of need at the hospital that formed our projects:
DEI resources for PWLE.
Ethics training and resources for PWLE.
Along with collaborators at Pride in Patient Engagement in Research at UHN and a committee featuring PWLE will be working to host a symposium in (TBC, likely Spring 2025) about institutional gaps, approaches and collaborative opportunities to work together on the engagement of PWLE.
All three projects will be co-designed, developed and run with PWLE from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences as a core principle of this work. To underlie our commitment to this - around a third of our budget is allocated to providing honoraria, travel costs and expenses for PWLE involved in the three projects - this includes committees, focus groups, evaluation of our developed materials and funds to cover attendance and contributions of PWLE at our symposia.
Thank you to the CIHR for recognizing that well-done and equitable engagement of PWLE is vital for driving research and innovation in Canada and for funding projects like these.