ECHO Research Partners and Funders

AHS is Canada’s first province-wide, fully integrated health system, announced on May 15, 2008, by Ron Liepert, Minister of Health and Wellness. We bring together 12 formerly separate health entities in the province including three geographically based health authorities, Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission (AADAC), Alberta Mental Health Board and Alberta Cancer Board. Ground ambulance service was added to the responsibilities of AHS in an announcement from Alberta Health and Wellness on May 30, 2008. The services were moved from municipalities to AHS effective April 1, 2009.

Alberta’s robust health research environment attracts top health care researchers, practitioners and innovators to the province. Our leading discoveries are enhancing care and practice in areas like cardiovascular health, brain development and health, diabetes, biomedical technologies, infectious diseases, and bone and joint health.

Alberta’s long-standing investment in health research excellence is set to have a greater impact than ever, through strengthened research and technology collaboration. These collaborations focus on creating new knowledge and catalyzing ground-breaking discoveries that result in new tools, processes and technologies for improving health and wellbeing.

Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions supports top-quality, internationally competitive health research. Our research seeks to further our understanding of health and disease, and to produce results that will make a difference to the health, economy and societal wellbeing of Albertans and people around the world.

The Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence (ARCHE) is located within the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta. The mandate of ARCHE is to

• Produce high-quality evidence syntheses aimed at priority issues in health
• Educate health providers and assist them in producing evidence syntheses
• Support and foster the development of evidence-based practice

CRNA is the professional and regulatory body for Alberta’s more than 33,000 registered nurses, including nurses in direct care, education, research and administration as well as nurse practitioners. Its mandate is to protect the public by ensuring that Albertans receive effective, safe and ethical care by registered nurses.

CIHR is Canada’s federal funding agency for health research. Composed of 13 Institutes, we collaborate with partners and researchers to support the discoveries and innovations that improve our health and strengthen our health care system.

The Canada Research Chairs Program invests approximately $265 million per year to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds. Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences. They improve our depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthen Canada’s international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of highly skilled people through student supervision, teaching, and the coordination of other researchers’ work.

The University of Alberta is home to Canada’s top nursing program, according to the 2022 Maclean’s rankings. The faculty plays a leading role in the education of tomorrow’s nurses. As one of the largest nursing faculties in the country, we are one of only six in Canada to offer a full range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

The Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta is dedicated to the advancement of child health through the delivery of exemplary patient care, teaching, and research. The department contributes to and advocates for the child health community through a network of pediatric physicians, scientists, educators, nurses and allied health professionals.

The Maternal Infant Child and Youth Research Network (MICYRN) is a federal not-for-profit, charitable organization founded in 2006 to build capacity for high-quality applied health research. It now links 20 maternal and child health research organizations based at academic health centres in Canada; is affiliated with more than 20 practice-based research networks; provides support to new and emerging teams; and has established strong national and international partnerships.

Canada’s global economic competitiveness depends on making new discoveries and transforming them into products, services and processes that improve the lives of Canadians. To meet this challenge, the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) offers a suite of programs that mobilize Canada’s best research, development and entrepreneurial expertise and focus it on specific issues and strategic areas.

PERC is a well-established network of health care researchers at 15 Canadian Children’s Hospitals that is dedicated to improving care in pediatric emergency medicine through multi-centre research. There are currently over 200 members including physicians, qualitative researchers, nurses, research managers, coordinators, and trainee/fellows.

Standards for Research in Child Health (StaR) is an international grassroots organization formed by methodologists, clinicians, policy makers, funders, trialists and researchers with the unified purpose of addressing the scarcity and deficiency of paediatric clinical trials.

This initiative aims to improve the design, conduct and reporting of paediatric research through the development and dissemination of evidence-based standards.  These evidence-based standards take in to consideration the methodological issues pertaining to clinical research design that are unique to child health such as recruitment and consent, justification for age groups, outcome selection and measurement, calculating adequate sample size, among others. To date, StaR has hosted three global summits, as well as writing weekends and workshops, resulting in six priority issues that have been addressed and published.

Highly-skilled child health professionals from around the world have made the Stollery Children’s Hospital, located within the University of Alberta Hospital, a well-recognized centre for specialized pediatric services. The Stollery is Western Canada’s referral centre for pediatric cardiac surgery and national leader in organ transplantation. The Stollery cares for children from northern and central Alberta, as well as parts of Manitoba.

Most acutely ill and injured children in Canada are managed within emergency departments that are not part of a children’s hospital. Difficulties in getting the right resources and training have been cited as barriers to providing the best possible care in these settings. This has resulted in variable levels of emergency care for children within Canada. Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK) is a knowledge mobilization network established to address these critical knowledge gaps and improve emergency care for children across Canada. 

The objectives of TREKK are to:

– Empower families to make informed pediatric healthcare decisions
By creating tools (videos, storybooks, etc) tailored to their needs and preferences

 – Improve care of children in general emergency departments

Through the creation and sharing of simulation-based training programs and tools for general emergency department practitioners

 – Expand TREKK’s reach

By developing more evidence-based tools and resources and promoting TREKK as the preferred forum for sharing pediatric emergency care knowledge

WCHRI supports groundbreaking multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research through grant competitions, ongoing research funding, professional development and expert resources. Membership is made up of 300 leading researchers, clinician-scientists, academics, health-care professionals and service providers from academic and community settings. All bring valuable perspectives to the issue of women and children’s health.