B: Building Research Capacity through Research Infrastructure Support

Teamwork is essential for meeting the health research challenges of today. Not only are health questions more complex, the climate of financial constraints and limited resources leaves no room for duplicate efforts. Researchers now work in teams and units across institutions, regions and provinces. Yet, B.C. research funding mechanisms have not kept pace with changing needs.

• More and more health research is shifting from universities to hospital sites and to the community. Budget constraints at B.C. universities are forcing cutbacks in infrastructure at all levels. Hospital operating grants are designated for support of clinical care, not research. The result is a critical, and growing, infrastructure gap at all levels of the research community.
• B.C. has no program to provide ongoing support for the development and maintenance of health research infrastructure. In contrast, other Canadian provinces directly support infrastructure (e.g. start-up grants, replacement equipment, computer support, animal facilities, renovations, grants facilitation, and networking costs).
  • through multi-year grants to research units (selected for support based on the quality of their scientific plan, with provision for renewal based on successfully completing a rigorous external review).
  • by matching a percentage of peer review grant funding that investigators bring in from external sources (match varies from 15 to 25 per cent, depending on the research sector in which the funds are generated). Funds are allocated to the host institutions for support of indirect research costs.
• Due to lack of infrastructure support, B.C. researchers are placed at a severe disadvantage, forced to cut into their research operating funds (grants) or to sacrifice research productivity (and therefore their ability to compete for peer-reviewed funding) by allotting a higher proportion of their research time to industry contracts for overhead to support infrastructure needs.
• B.C.'s location in the extreme west of Canada makes travel for networking far more costly than is the case for provinces that are more centrally located.

Infrastructure Recommendations
Based on elements of the very successful model that has been developed in Quebec, these recommendations will develop and maintain the human and program support infrastructure necessary to underpin research excellence and to empower B.C. researchers to bring home a per capita or better share of federal research funding.

• Plan and implement programs of support in two areas: research units and research networks.
• To address critical short term issues (particularly the lack of any provincial support for health-related research infrastructure in hospitals and in the wider community) and the need to prepare for new Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funding requirements, make the priority in the short-term (first five years) support for research units (75 - 80 per cent). Give priority to assisting existing areas of strength before supporting the development of new research units. As funding allows, allocate support strategically for new research units that expand B.C.'s capacity to lead and participate in new CIHR health research initiatives and opportunities.

• In the short term, allocate the remainder of infrastructure funding (20 - 25 per cent) to assist researchers in developing and participating in provincial, national and international networks to build critical mass in preparation for CIHR.

Recommendations - Research Unit

• Define research units on the basis of involvement in health issues and the opportunity to address health issues through a spectrum of research approaches (mirrors Canadian Institute for Health Research structure, thereby increasing the competitiveness of B.C. units for peer-review funding from this source)
• Establish categories of research units based on a minimum number of investigators and a minimum amount of external peer-reviewed funding.
• Allocate funding for research units based on the quality of the unit's research plan, with provision for renewal of funds based on rigorous external peer review. For some categories, renewal opportunities may be restricted (i.e. the purpose of the funding is to enable the unit to grow and qualify for the next stage of funding within a set time frame).
• Ensure funding mechanisms provide opportunities for research units to evolve in scope and size.
• Establish a sliding scale of infrastructure support for research units, reflecting that units are dynamic and will grow or shrink depending on the productivity of the members. Based on the external review process and the number of unit categories that are established, units that grow larger/more productive may move up categories and become eligible for increased support. By the same token, units that shrink may lose funding support.

Recommendations - Supporting Network Capacity

• Support networking and collaborations among disciplines and programs in and between provincial institutions. (This will improve B.C.'s ability to compete nationally by providing the capacity to co-ordinate large projects and to develop critical mass across institutions.)
• Support groups of provincial researchers to develop and participate in national networks in preparation for meeting the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research funding criteria that will promote/favour inter-disciplinary, multi-centre health research projects encompassing all sectors (basic, clinical, health services, population health and community research).