HDRN Canada Data Points - December 2024

Seasons Greetings from the Scientific Director

Dear friends and colleagues,

As we move into the holiday season, I'm proud to reflect on HDRN Canada's accomplishments over the past year. I continue to be inspired by the commitment and enthusiasm of our members, who work every day to drive forward our mission of supporting multi-regional research to improve health and health equity across Canada.

2024 was an incredibly busy year for HDRN Canada, marked with many projects and events. In April, we brought together over 800 people in-person and online for our second annual forum Health Data for All of Us, which included a series of engaging discussions about trust and transparency in the world of health data research. We were happy to see the enthusiastic reception to our Federated Analysis: State of the Science Collective Learning Series as well as our groundbreaking Big IDEAs About Health Data Speaker Series.

Throughout the year, members from across the network collaborated to advance our shared work, some of it producing critical outputs in 2024 and others that are laying the groundwork for things to come. We developed a comprehensive Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) strategy, which helps crystallize the next set of actions to embed these principles in data-intensive research. We recruited new members to our Public Advisory Council, and look forward to the impact our youth representation will have in our conversations about health data. We continue to develop resources that help with planning and then doing multi-regional research, all of which can be accessed through our Data Access Support Hub (DASH).

This year also had a big focus on partnerships, including with the members of the Health Data Research Alliance. This group is working together to identify and address issues of common interest. One focus for 2025 will be on federated data. HDRN Canada’s pilot work on creating common data and common data model as well as demonstrations of robust federated analysis are contributions to this collective work.

The accomplishments of our network are possible because of the passion and dedication of our member organizations, the 160+ people across Canada who work with us, as well as the partnerships with other individuals and organizations. 2025 will no doubt be another active year. For now, I wish you all a restful and rejuvenating holiday season and the best for the new year.

Warmly,

Kim

Kim McGrail | Scientific Director & CEO

Health Data Research Network Canada

What's Up @ HDRN Canada?

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Chronic health & the 2S/LGBTQQIA+ community

Don't miss the next instalment of the Big IDEAs About Health Data Speaker Series on January 23, featuring Anu Radha Verma and Dr. Nathan Lachowsky discussing their work looking at chronic health, the 2S/LGBTQQIA+ community and administrative health data.

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Open access learning for pragmatic trials training

HDRN Canada has teamed up with CANTRAIN to better amplify educational materials from HDRN Canada's Pragmatic Trials Training Program. CANTRAIN is an online platform funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) that promotes online training.

Better risk prediction models for endometrial cancer

In the latest DASH Researcher Spotlight, we talk to Dr. Aline Talhouk about her work using multi-regional data accessed through HDRN Canada's Data Access Support Hub (DASH) to build better risk prediction models that can improve how we identify endometrial cancer in Canada.

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Roadmap to better rare disease decision-making

HDRN Canada partnered with Canada's Drug Agency and ICES to produce A Roadmap for Patient and Disease Registries: Linking Health Data to Enhance Rare Disease Decision-Making, a new tool to help teams that manage patient and disease registries navigate data linkage.

Upcoming Events

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The Impact of BC’s Contraception Subsidy | DECEMBER 17 | 12:00 p.m. PT

Learn about a new study estimating the effect of Canada's first universal no-cost contraception subsidy on contraception use and out-of-pocket costs, presented by the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research.

REGISTER

Canadian Healthcare System: What Got Us Here | JANUARY 15 2025 | 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. CT

Explore how the pandemic has reshaped health systems in the George and Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation's Provincial Health Leadership Program Keynote Address with Dr. Verna Yiu.

REGISTER

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Winter 2025 AIP4PH Short Courses | JANUARY 20 - FEBRUARY 28 2025

Applications for the Winter 2025 AI4PH Short Courses are now open. These unique virtual short courses aim to increase understanding about AI, public health and equity in research and practice. Applications are due December 16.

REGISTER

Population Health Data Analysis | JANUARY - APRIL 2025

This new course from Population Data BC and the University of Victoria provides an introduction to the field of epidemiology and covers a variety of analytic topics not commonly addressed in elementary statistics courses.

REGISTER

Save the date! CRDCN Annual Conference
May 13 - 14 | OTTAWA

The Canadian Research Data Centre Network will host its annual conference in May, marking 25 years of partnership for research. This two-day event will feature plenaries, presentations and plenty of networking opportunities in Ottawa.

REGISTER

Call for reviewers: 2025 CAHSPR CONFERENCE | MAY 26 - 29 | OTTAWA

Are you interested in becoming a reviewer for the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research Conference? Submit your application to become an abstract reviewer by January 15.

SUBMIT

News from Across the Network

Emergency department visits for primary care

New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information examines how many visits to emergency departments are for conditions that could be managed in primary care, finding that one in seven visits could be managed outside of the emergency department.

Interdisciplinary Summer School in Digital Health

The Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire en informatique de la santé is welcoming applications for their annual Interdisciplinary Summer School in Digital Health, a program that introduces participants to the challenges of setting up a learning health system.

Health Workforce Canada's data & info dashboards

Learn what's happening with Canada's health workforce by exploring Health Workforce Canada's data and information dashboards. Powered by CIHI and Statistics Canada, they provide an interactive, consolidated view of currently available health workforce data.

ICES Plain Language Thesaurus

Check out the ICES Plain Language Thesaurus, a useful tool to better communicate research results to the public. The resource compiles words, phrases and sentences that are commonly used in ICES reports and provides plain language alternatives.

CIHR funding to support breastfeeding Initiative

HDRN Canada Executive Member Dr. Nathan Nickel has received funding from CIHR National Women’s Health Research Initiative Innovation Fund to support the THRIVE project, which aims to create a support network for breastfeeding in community health centres.

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How migration is shaping New Brunswick’s future

Learn how tracking migration patterns in New Brunswick can reveal the social and economic forces that drive change in this article from New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training on the latest update to their ongoing Populations and Demographics series.

Statistics Canada's 2021 CanCHEC dataset available

Unlock new insights with Statistics Canada’s 2021 Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort (CanCHEC)! This dataset combines Census and administrative health data, offering a powerful tool to analyze health trends by a range of socio-demographics.

Unité de soutien SSA Québec's 2023-24 Activity Report

Read about the Unité de soutien SSA Québec's commitment to the construction and application of scientific and experiential knowledge in their 2023-24 Activity Report, which outlines scientific programs and achievements from the past year.

Publications

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Secondary use of administrative health data

An article in the International Journal of Population Data Science, co-authored by HDRN Canada Pragmatic Trials Training Program Manager Dr. Taylor McLinden, examines the secondary use of routinely collected health data for epidemiologic research.