CPCRC Newsletter: June 2025

by | Jun 30, 2025 | News, Newsletter | 0 comments

Dear colleagues and community members,

I am excited to be sharing the inaugural Canadian Primary Care Research Consortium (CPCRC) newsletter with you.

As many of you know, CPCRC is a collaborative initiative dedicated to strengthening primary care research across Canada. It brings together the Canadian Primary Care Research Network (CPCRN), the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) and the Canadian Primary Care Trials Network (CPCTN). We are committed to fostering innovation, improving healthcare outcomes, and ensuring that research informs and enhances primary care practices nationwide for the good of all Canadian peoples.

Over the past 7-8 months, we have made progress toward this vision, as outlined in the Progress Updates shared below. We are happy to share that co-building efforts continue as we are hosting targeted Focus Group discussions which build upon public consultative sessions held this Spring. Additionally, the founders have been scheduling 1:1 meetings with members who have expressed interest in co-development. Please do not hesitate to reach out should you wish to be involved.

In this newsletter, we are sharing CPCRC updates and opportunities, as well as news from the CPCRN, CPCSSN and CPCTN respectively. Looking ahead, we hope to publish six such newsletters per year to keep you apprised of developments, including job postings. On that note, a call out for applications for CPCRC permanent positions will be happening this fall.

I wish you a restful summer in the company of family and friends and look forward to reconnecting in September 2025.

All the best,

Ayat Salman
Interim Executive Director, CPCRC

PS – If this newsletter was forwarded to you, please contact us so that we can add you to our mailing list. Thank you!

Consortium News

Progress Updates

Read the Summary Report of our Co-build Sessions

Partnership Updates

Care Forward Program
The CPCRC is proud to be a Supporting Organization of the Care Forward Program that Healthcare Excellence Canada has launched geared at building momentum and driving real change in the delivery of healthcare.

College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC)
The CPCRC is excited to be partnering with CFPC to host two networking events in Winnipeg this November 2025, alongside the FMF Conference, aimed at bringing together members of our respective communities for further collaboration.

Chronic Pain Network (CPN)
The CPCRC is collaborating with the CPN’s new Primary Care Advisory Committee. This advisory group will provide strategic guidance to CPN’s approach related to primary care, helping shape initiatives that support and guide chronic pain management, aligned with Health Canada’s Action Plan for Pain.

Comings & Goings

Welcome:

Employment Opportunities

  • Communications Officer at University of New Brunswick – This position is for CPCRN/CPCRC communications. While in-person in NB is preferred, eligibility to apply is open to all in Canada, except Quebec (different labour laws).
  • Permanent job postings for the CPCRC will be shared this fall.

CPCRN News

Patient Council Spotlight

Congratulations to Ghislaine Rouly who has been invited to give a keynote address at the University of Limerick, Ireland at the Participatory Health Research Unit’s Public and Patient Involvement Summer School Program. She continues to be a trailblazer!

Congratulations to Brenda Andreas whose article, Responsible Research: The voice of the patient adds value, was recently published in the June 2025 issue of the CFP Journal. Drawing on her personal story she delivers a powerful message on relational equity and its critical place in our health system.

Many thanks to our TUTOR-PHC Fellow (2024-25) Andréanne Bernier, who produced two video vignettes in English (linked on left) and French (linked below), focusing on the importance of patient partners embedded within the PriCARE2 project. It features our very own Ghislaine Rouly, Judy Porter and Jackie Hanson. Thanks also to Marie-Dominique Poirier who joined in this effort.

Research Spotlight

OECD Patient Reported Indicator Surveys (PaRIS) – Second Cycle
Canada (via Health Canada) is interested in participating in the second cycle of the PaRIS OECD. They have invited CPCRN to be Canada’s organization to complete this project. PaRIS is the OECD’s Patient Reported Indicator Surveys initiative where countries work together on developing, standardizing, and implementing a new generation of indicators that measure the outcomes and experiences of healthcare that matter most to people. The PaRIS survey fills a critical gap in information about health system funding, by asking about aspects like coordination of care and trust, as well as quality of life, pain, physical functioning and psychological well-being. Learn more here: Patient-Reported Indicator Surveys | OECD

Decreasing inappropriate antibiotic use in primary care patients with viral respiratory tract infections – Phase 2
Phase 2 of this CPCRN funded study is a feasibility study involving BC, MB and ON to understand the viability of mechanisms to advance beyond previously demonstrated efficacious audit and feedback techniques focusing on the highest prescribers of antibiotics. The project will then adopt a cross-sectional exploratory study design to investigate feasibility of a targeted practice facilitation intervention leveraging the Antibiotics Wisely campaign tools (Using Antibiotics Wisely in Primary Care).

CPCSSN News

2025 CPCSSN Case Definition Report

This report outlines CPCSSN’s approach to developing and validating EMR-based case definitions—standardized algorithms that accurately identify patients with specific health conditions through structured protocols and manual chart reviews. With over 30 validated case definitions in use, including for diabetes, depression, cardiovascular disease, and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs), CPCSSN supports consistent, high-quality analysis across jurisdictions and EMR systems. The report also introduces new definitions for gout, IBD, and IBS, and outlines plans for future development. CPCSSN continues to expand data utility by exploring natural language processing (NLP) and optical character recognition (OCR) to extract clinical details from unstructured text and scanned documents, strengthening the foundation for evidence-based primary care research in Canada.

Read the report here

CPCTN News

CanTreatCOVID

The CanTreatCOVID study team is pleased to announce that enrollment officially ended on March 31st 2025. To date, 797 participants were successfully enrolled with 716 enrolled to the Paxlovid arm and 81 enrolled to the Antioxidant arm. Participants were enrolled across 6 provinces: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland & Labrador, Ontario and Quebec. A huge thank you goes out to the CanTreatCOVID staff and PBRLNs who made this possible – your dedication and contribution to various tasks over the past 2+years have been instrumental to the success of this study. You can find more information at the following websites: CanTreatCOVID and UPSTREAM LAB.

Building Capacity

CPCRN Learning Series
Our CPCRN Learning Series will resume in September with Dr. Bill Montelpare and the PEI team with a focus on primary care transformation. Details will follow. Past recordings can be found here.

CPCRN Trainee Learning Series
Many thanks to Daphne To and Adhanom Baraki, TUTOR-PHC Fellows who designed our three Learning Sessions for trainees, including sessions on Implementation Science, Proposal Writing for teams and a Consortium update. Past recordings can be found here.

E-Learning Series
Social Work in Primary Care is a free six-module e-learning program which supports a national vision to build capacity and raise awareness of the essential role social workers play in primary care.

HDRN Canada Pragmatic Trials – One Year In
July 2nd marks the first anniversary of the HDRN Canada Pragmatic Trials Training Program. Over the past year, the program has fostered a dynamic learner-centred environment by delivering weekly modules, spotlighting exemplar trials, and creating opportunities for learners to engage in expert-led discussions and debates. View Annual Report here

Conferences

Family Medicine Forum
November 5th – 8th, 2025
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Details here

SPOR Opportunities

CHILD-BRIGHT Network – Virtual Webinar

Unité de Soutien SSA Québec  – Module 101

Other Opportunities

2025 OurCare National Survey
The OurCare project is conducting a new research survey  to understand how people’ experiences of care measure up to the OurCare Standard. The survey is open till July 9th and they would like it filled by as many people as possible. Please help spread the word. The OurCare project is being led by Dr. Tara Kiran from the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions.

Canada’s Single Research Ethics Review System
CanReview has launched its online system for single research ethics review of Canada-wide, multi-site clinical trials!

Recommended Reading

New Issue of Expériences Magazine
No. 8 May / June 2025
Read issue here (available in French only)

Public Trust, Literacy and Health Data Foundations in Canada
HDRN Canada has developed a paper on public trust and data literacy, in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada. Read synopsis here.

Expanded Role for Pharmacists in New Brunswick
Research from NB-IRDT combined clinic operational data from six pharmacy clinics in New Brunswick with survey data to assess a Pharmacist Care Clinic pilot program. Read report here.

Multi-Regional Study of Primary Care Capacity in Canada
A publication in BMJ Open explores the gap between population primary health care needs and health system capacity using multi-regional administrative health data from British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Read publication here.