Research funders

Research funders can play a key role in strengthening many evidence-support system components. Indeed, research funders are perhaps more responsible than any community for ensuring Canada has mechanisms in place to:

  • deliver timely, demand-driven evidence support when ‘windows of opportunity’ open in federal, provincial/territorial and local advisory and decision-making processes and in multilateral processes (with policy-scale living evidence syntheses)
  • identify scientific shifts that have agenda-setting potential (with continuous evidence surveillance)
  • create feedback loops for next-generation primary research (and identifying the research that tipped the balance in what we know, and hence supporting research-impact assessment)
  • reduce research waste (in both primary and secondary research).

They also have a role to play in positioning Canada at the forefront of efforts to create and share synthesis- and AI-ready data and synthesis-derived data

Canadian research funders have repeatedly expressed interest in all of these mechanisms, however, as yet this has not translated into funding or into the many supportive actions that do not require funding.

For actionable insights on the critical role that research funders can play in strengthening the pan-Canadian health evidence-support system, we encourage you to download ESN-CA brief 6. This brief lists four possible next steps:

  1. inform funding calls for applied primary research with insights from living evidence maps and policy-scale living evidence syntheses, particularly noting where there are gaps in domestic evidence or where the ‘global evidence’ needs a significant change in the designs and methods being used in order to give us greater confidence in what we know
  2. find ways to fund the different components of the evidence-support system, as well as for complementary learning health systems and misinformation support
  3. fund Canada’s fair share of the global evidence architecture, including the Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative
  4. include meaningful engagement of demand-side actors, including citizens, as a requirement of all three of the above types of funding and in the structures and processes made possible by this funding.