Health funding group formed

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Health issues affecting Aboriginal people in Canada will soon be specifically targeted for research funding, as the newly formed Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) begins to take form.

The CIHR was established in June by the federal government to act as a funding agency for health research, designed to connect and support researchers from across Canada. The CIHR replaces the Medical Research Council, the organization formerly responsible for funding medical and bio-medical research in Canada.

In July, federal Minster of Health Alan Rock and CIHR president Dr. Allan Bernstein announced creation of 13 research institutes that will make up the CIHR. One of the 13 will be the Institute of Aboriginal People's Health, which will support research addressing the health needs of Aboriginal people in Canada.

Other institutes include the institutes of Cancer Research, Circulatory and Respiratory Health, Gender and Health, Genetics, Health Services and Policy Research, Healthy Aging, Human Development and Child and Youth Health, Infection and Immunity, Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis, Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes, and the Institute of Population and Public Health. Each institute will work to fund and coordinate research in its specific coverage area, including biomedical and clinical science research, as well as research into health systems and services, and social and cultural factors affecting health.

The institutes are "virtual" organizations, comprised of a network connecting researchers rather than a centralized physical location.

The work of the various institutes will begin once scientific directors and institute advisory boards have been recruited and appointed.

Faye Kert is deputy director of communications for CIHR.

According to Kert, the focus of funding has expanded through the newly formed CIHR, now going beyond the purely medical and bio-medical research initiatives funded through the Medical Research Council.

"We're taking in areas that we've never done before that have relevance to health in a non-medical way," Kert said. Under CIHR's Institute of Aboriginal Health, for instance, those doing medical research will continue to be included within the institute's mandate, but now so will people involved in such things as Native traditional medicines or traditional community healing circles.

Kert said the hope is that all the institutes will be up and running by the end of October, with scientific directors and institute advisory boards in place.

The first series of grants and awards through the CIHR were announced by Minister Rock and Dr. Bernstein at a press conference in Edmonton Aug. 15. A total of $194 million over the next five years has been earmarked for health research spending, with the CIHR to fund 647 health researchers across Canada.