PIRN
Inaugural Meeting
PIRN was launched on July 23, 2019 at an inaugural meeting in Toronto. Our first annual meeting, funded by the Ontario Child Health Support Unit (OCHSU – a SPOR unit), SickKids Foundation, and the Department of Paediatrics, University of Toronto, brought together 17 member hospital research leads from all major children’s academic centres from Newfoundland to British Columbia and several large Toronto community site leads to begin the exciting work of developing the research network. Scientists from exemplar child health research networks in Canada and the US shared their experiences and advice on successful patient-oriented research network development; parents and researchers discussed how to build meaningful partnership to conduct patient-oriented research; the Ontario SPOR Support Unit assistant director spoke about the SPOR landscape and funding opportunities; and Children’s Healthcare Canada associate director discussed knowledge sharing and advocacy around child health. The PIRN meeting was a significant milestone in the development of the network!
PIRN has begun its work. Since our July meeting, we have been having monthly teleconferences and developed a mission, vision statement; begun to work on creating a PIRN website; have established a process for study intake and review; and reviewed several new study proposals on bronchiolitis, urinary tract infections, and osteomyelitis.
Post Development
Funding
PIRN received its first CIHR grant January 2020, entitled “Patient-oriented research priorities for paediatric hospital care: a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership” lead by Peter Gill, Associate Scientist, SickKids Research Institute. The grant application was ranked #1 of 147 submitted, which is testament to the strong team and importance of the topic. In the end, the grant brought together 36 participants from across Canada (and the UK!) with 17 letters of support from professional organizations, patient family advisory councils, and SPOR support units. This work will be important for PIRN to understand research priorities for the network.
Annual Meeting
Please join us at our next PIRN annual meeting in 2023. Contact us for more details