Barriers to Getting Research Out of the Ivory Tower

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Barriers to Getting Research Out of the Ivory
Tower
Dr. Colleen M. Flood Scientific Director
Institute of Health Services and Policy Research,
CIHR Canada Research Chair in Health Law and
Policy Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Jerry Lee Lecture, London, England May 2007
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CIHRs 13 Institutes
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Who do you most identify with? If researchers
and decision-makers both self-identify with the
hero who is the villain?
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SIGNIFICANT HURDLES to.

• Multi-disciplinary Research
• Applied Policy Research

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Multi-disciplinary Research Matters!

• Challenging questions (and solutions) of
  contemporary society lie in the cracks between
  the cooling cores of the traditional disciplines

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Strategic Training Initiatives in Health Research
(STIHRS) 650 Multi-disciplinary Trainees in
Health Services(these are not any of them but
just 12 random people)
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Breaking Down Barriers
The First Law of Economists For every economist,
there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The Second Law of Economists They're both
wrong.

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Investing in Health
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The Impasse

• What fuels disdain for
• applied policy scholarship and applied policy
  researchers?

What can we do about it? What are we doing about
it?
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R. E. S. P. E. C.T(just a little bit, yeah!)
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Challenges

• There is an assumption that applied scholarship
• is not rigorous
• - In most respects, this is a false assumption
  which has to be rebutted vigorously
• - In a few cases, there is an element of truth to
  this concern

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False Assumptionif your are not a scientist you
must be a journalist?

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Ask a narrow question..

• It is easier to construct a methodology that will
  answer a narrow question even if the question
  itself is incorrectly framed, has assumed the
  real world away, and is largely meaningless in
  terms of its relevance for the outside world.
• Merely academic!

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Challenges Arm Chair Scholars

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A way out of the impasse
Towards multi-disciplinarity
Breaking down barriers

• How can we ensure that the quality of
  scholarship produced by multi-disciplinary and
  applied scholars is of the highest standard?
• How can we have the highest academic standards
  if we dont agree on what those standards are?

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Opportunities

• WE NEED TO
• Improve the collective game of health service
  researchers (we need to be better than the
  others)
• Understand and respect each others
  methodologies

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We are tougher on ourselves in peer review than
the biomedical and clinical researchers

• This reinforces the views of those who dont
  value applied work

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Some Relevant CIHR Initiatives

• Strategic Training Research Initiative (STIHRS)
  650 graduates in health services and policy
• Advancing Theories, Frameworks, Methods and
  Measurement in Health Services Policy Research
  and Knowledge Translation

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Partnerships for Health Systems Improvement
(PHSI)

• Supports teams of researchers and decision-makers
  to conduct applied health research useful to
  health system managers and/or policy makers
• Requires 11 matching funds
• Merit is reviewed
• INCENTIVE FOR RESEARCERS SUCCESS RATES CLOSER
  TO 40 AS OPPOSED TO 20 IN THE OPEN

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Applied Chairs in Health Services and Policy
Research

• Mid-Career Chairs (5-10 years in) for researchers
  dedicated to knowledge transfer
• Provides status within the university
• Funding for research and for training graduate
  students (185 k package up to 100 k for
  salary and balance for research and training)
• BUT ONLY 7 CHAIRSa drop in the ocean compared to
  what is needed.

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UNIVERSITIES MUST MODERNIZE
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Canadian think tanks

• There are 30 independent think tanks in Canada

• Atlantic Institute for Market Studies
• Caledon Institute on Social Policy
• Canada West Foundation
• Canadian Centre on Social Development
• Canadian Centre for Policy Ingenuity
• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
• Canadian Institute of International Affairs
• Canadian Policy Research Networks
• Canadian Institute for Research on

• C.D Howe Institute
• Conference Board of Canada
• Fraser Institute
• Institute on Governance
• Institute for Research on Social Policy
• Institute for Policy Analysis
• International Development Research Centre
• Montreal Economic Institute
• Policy Research Initiative

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Conclusion

• Universities and researchers will not always act
  in the own long-term best interest and change
  will not be driven from within
• Funders need to be provide financial and other
  incentives so that universities will support
  multidisciplinary and applied policy scholars
• Only a very small percentage of research funding
  in Canada is targeted. We need to shift the
  balance.
• Governments should require of funders that some
  portion of the research funded is shown to be
  policy relevant (rather than micro-managing the
  production by universities of the stuff they are
  going to produce anyways)

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WE SHOULD ASPIRE TO.(DONT COMPROMISE)

• SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE
• AND
• RELEVANCE

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i
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Open Competition vs PHSI
Success Rates
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Two major avenues of grant funding70 OPEN
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• STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
• (RFAs, including PHSI)
• Priority areas, terms of reference and evaluation
  criteria are chosen by Institutes or CIHR
  Branches (i.e., Ethics, KT)
• Peer review or
• Merit Review

• OPEN COMPETITIONS
• Operating Grants

Any area of health research Investigator-initiat
ed research topics Peer review
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Canadian INSTITUTES of Health Research

• But the Institutes receive less than 15 of the
  total budget (8 million per annum) it is only
  with this relatively small percentage that it is
  possible to demand that research be
  policy-relevant.

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HSPR (Theme 3) grants funding
In Proportion to Total CIHR Budget Cumulative
00-01 to 05-06