Feasibility Study On Health Outcomes for Women and Diverse Members in the Canadian Armed Forces

Funding opportunity

Researchers are invited to apply for a new grant funding opportunity sponsored by Canadian Forces Health Services (CFHS) Director of Women and Diversity Health (D WDH) to conduct a feasibility study. This feasibility study is required to provide D WDH with an understanding of the privacy, methodological, and resource implications of accessing health care utilization (HCU) and other routinely collected administrative data for research or surveillance with respect to health outcomes for women and diverse members in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).

Anticipated timeline and budget

Background

Women and diverse populations have been historically under-researched in medicine, and this has limited our knowledge of their unique health needs, including health risks, prevention, and treatment options. For these reasons, CFHS established D WDH. The D WDH aims to optimize prevention and care for women and diverse members, using an intersectional lens, to improve their physical, mental and psychosocial wellbeing. This is aligned with governmental priorities and current shifts in research.

Since the inception of the D WDH in 2022, the Directorate has focused on establishing relationships with stakeholders and partners to identify collaborative opportunities and minimize duplication of effort, as well as to begin to identify opportunities for high priority research.

Healthcare utilization databases (HCU) and routinely collected administrative data represent a potentially rich source of data for health researchers; however, accessing these data can be complex, time-consuming, and costly, because they are not primarily collected for health research.

See the following reference for a similar study: Accessing Health Care Utilization Databases for Health Research: A Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging Feasibility Study.

This feasibility study is required to help D WDH identify available HCUs, data stewards, and available data sets, and issues with variability in data quality across the databases. It is also anticipated that this feasibility study will identify barriers to data access for different stakeholders (e.g. CFHS or external), and concerns regarding privacy, confidentiality and consent, and any concerns that might arise for diverse members in particular. Researchers are encouraged to select the methods appropriate to address the research question, which may include qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods.

Researchers should focus not only on the Canadian Forces Health Information System (CFHIS) as a data source but should look more broadly at other sources, which may include data on CAF members or veterans, such as Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data and Statistics Canada data, among others. D WDH is interested in understanding all available data sources, where they are stored, how easily data can be extracted, how data can be linked, and if there are any privacy implications.

Research objectives

This funding opportunity is seeking submissions from researchers to conduct a feasibility study to provide D WDH with an understanding of the privacy, methodological, and resource implications of accessing health care utilization (HCU) and other routinely collected administrative data for research or surveillance with respect to health outcomes for women and diverse members in the CAF.

Desired outputs

• A feasibility study in the format of a report, including an Executive Summary, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Data analysis, Results, Discussion and References, and the other specifications as described above.
• The feasibility study should address the privacy, methodological and resource implications of accessing health care utilization (HCU) and other routinely collected administrative data for research or surveillance with respect to health outcomes for women and diverse members in the CAF.
• Comment on any additional considerations for developing a relevant policy approach or strategy relating to developing a research or surveillance platform for women and diverse CAF members.
• SAGER guidelines followed.
• Virtual presentation of findings to project sponsor (may take place after the project end date).
• Quarterly progress reports provided to the D WDH.

Applicant qualifications and requirements

• Principal investigator on the project must have a PhD in a relevant field.
• All appropriate academic research guidelines must be followed, including a research ethics board approval from Defence Research Development Canada (DRDC) or any accredited academic institution in Canada will be required prior to funding being issued if necessary to the method(s) selected.
• Approval from the Surgeon General Health Research Board is required. A CFHS point of contact will be provided to facilitate this process once the research proposals are selected.

Application deadline

Please download and submit the Research Funding Application form.

Enquiries

Questions about this funding opportunity can be emailed to the VAC Research office.