Question Period Note: CANADIAN INSTITUTES OF HEALTH RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR COVID-19 RESEARCH

• Canadians and people around the world are expecting the international research community to quickly develop and rollout safe vaccines and therapies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and return to a more normal life.

KEY MESSAGES
• Research is central to our domestic and international efforts to address COVID-19 and the Canadian research community has risen to the challenge at an unprecedented pace.
• Through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), our government has been working hand in hand with domestic and international partners to find solutions to this pandemic.
• I have confidence that these initiatives led by CIHR will bring the evidence we need to help Canada address this public health crisis.
IF PRESSED ON DETAILS OF THESE INVESTMENTS…
• Since March 2021, CIHR has moved quickly, working with partners, to invest more than $250 million in more than 560 research projects, which focus not only on vaccines, but also on other therapeutics, testing, and transmission dynamics, and other COVID-19 related priority areas as they emerged.
• This includes support for the creation of new research evidence to address the substance use and mental health needs of Canadians during these difficult times.
• Enabled by this investment, CIHR and partners across Canada collaborated to inform the implementation of promising interventions and policies designed to improve pandemic preparedness within long-term care facilities.
• I am also pleased to say that CIHR’s investments towards COVID-19 research have committed to supporting research that addresses the impact of the pandemic on the well-being of Indigenous Peoples, enhancing Indigenous community-led research and knowledge mobilization
• Further, in March 2021, our government announced an investment of $144 million through CIHR to support research that will increase our understanding of persistent and emerging gaps and priority areas – including variants – and provide decision makers with rapid guidance and evidence.

COVID-19 Rapid Research Response at a glance:
Canada’s research community is contributing to both the global and domestic response to COVID-19 and is well-poised for significant discoveries.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), as Canada’s health research funding agency, has moved at an unprecedented pace to mobilize the research community and deliver programs while maintaining rigour in funding the most outstanding research.

CIHR and its federal and provincial partners accelerated their timelines to invest $55.3M that translated into 100 research grants from the initial COVID-19 Rapid Research Response competition in March 2020. Medical countermeasures funding accounts for 53 of the 100 projects funded for a total of $36.5M, including research into vaccines, diagnostics, transmission dynamics, therapeutics and clinical management. The social and policy countermeasures funding accounts for 47 of the 100 projects funded for a total of $17.7M, including research into coordination, governance, and logistics; public health response and its impact; social dynamics, communications, and trust; and, transmission dynamics.

In April 2020, CIHR received an additional $114.9M in funding for additional countermeasures against COVID-19:
• Approximately $100 million of this investment enables researchers to accelerate the development, testing and implementation of medical and social countermeasures to mitigate the rapid spread of COVID-19 and its negative consequences on people, communities, and health systems. In collaboration with its partners, CIHR was able to support 153 grants representing a total investment of $123.5 million. Twenty-two of these were funded in partnership with the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, and focus on improving our understanding of COVID-19 immunity in Canada, a $12.4 million investment.
• Approximately $10 million of this investment supported CIHR’s COVID-19 and Mental Health Initiative. In collaboration with PHAC and Health Canada, this initiative supports 101 research projects, representing a total investment of $13.5M from CIHR and partners. The grants focus on a number of priority populations, including: healthcare and public safety personnel, older adults and residents of long-term care homes, people who use drugs, women and indigenous populations. New knowledge generated through these projects will be mobilized to ensure it will inform policy making in a timely manner.
• This investment also secured Canadian participation in domestic and international clinical trials responsive to WHO priorities to increase the understanding of the efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines, therapeutics, mental health supports and clinical management approaches to COVID-19.

CIHR’s COVID-19 Rapid Response funding opportunities also enabled partnerships between industry leaders (e.g. Medicago, Inovio), and Canadian researchers.

Additionally, CIHR – in partnership with PHAC - funds the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN), a national network that undertakes coordinated, collaborative, and multi-disciplinary vaccine and immunization-related research. This includes examining various biomedical research questions and aspects of the vaccine life cycle including safety, short- and long-term effectiveness and protection, as well as social issues like hesitancy and uptake.

Further, medical countermeasure funds will also allow the Government of Canada, under the leadership of CIHR, to set up a Centre for Pandemic Preparedness and Health Emergencies Research that will lay the groundwork towards more nimble domestic and global pandemic research coordination. The Centre will allow CIHR to support real-time knowledge translation and knowledge mobilization for use by the research community and decision-makers alike, as well as to build capacity and fund research into emergent priorities in pandemic preparedness.

CIHR has also invested in research to better understand and address the impacts of the pandemic on the opioid crisis in Canada. With a $1M investment from CIHR, CRISM (a CIHR funded network) produced national guidance documents to enable the development and dissemination of national guidelines related to prescribing, dispensing, and delivery of opioids and other narcotics during the COVID-19 pandemic to support people who use drugs.

CIHR also invested $2.1 million to fund the Operating Grant for the Evaluation of Harm Reductions Approaches to Address the Opioid Crisis in the Context of COVID-19. This investment is funding five research grants that would address harm reduction approaches to the opioid crisis and to better understand its compounding intersection with the COVID-19 pandemic.

To inform the next steps of the COVID-19 response in long-term care, CIHR and partners have invested $3.4M to support evidence-informed implementation and sustainability of promising practice interventions and policies designed to improve pandemic preparedness within long-term care, in collaboration with Healthcare Excellence Canada.

In September 2020 CIHR launched the Indigenous COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity, with a total investment of approximately $2 million in support of thirteen strengths-based, solutions-focused research projects that focus on a wide range of topics and use diverse methods, forming a strong base to study and understand the experiences of First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Urban Indigenous communities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The research, which is bold, innovative and Indigenous community-led, will address the consequences of COVID-19 and inform future preparedness. The findings will be used by Indigenous communities, researchers and decision-makers. Notices of decision were provided in March 2021.

A second Indigenous COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity was launched on October 6, 2021. This additional $6 million funding will enable rapid and timely distinctions-based, and Indigenous community-led research and knowledge mobilization that is responsive to the unique circumstances and the current phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in First Nations, Inuit, Métis and Urban Indigenous communities in Canada.

Building on the priorities from CIHR’s COVID-19 investments, CIHR has launched several rapid response competitions to support emerging priorities. This includes:
• A $1 million investment in the COVID-19 Knowledge Synthesis Network Funding Opportunity, to support collaboration and rapid response to the need for synthesized Canadian knowledge and evidence across the full breadth of Canada’s COVID-19 pandemic response (including public-health measures, clinical management, health-system arrangements, and economic and social impacts).
• An investment of $6M in the Network of Clinical Trials Networks Funding Opportunity, to expand existing national and international clinical trial networks to coordinate research on interventions to prevent, detect, manage, and/or treat COVID-19.
• An investment of $4.9M for supplementary funding for CIHR funded COVID-19 researchers studying variants to accelerate research and lead the formation of a variant network to coordinate and align efforts in this field. The funding start date was March 1, 2021.
• A $9M investment in a Canadian Network for Emerging Variants Research that will enable the rapid support of research activities required to swiftly characterize and assess the individual and population health threats of emerging variants of concern.
• Priority funding of applications to the Fall 2020 Project Grant competition to invest in applications specifically addressing persistent evidence gaps such as variants of the virus, vaccine development and uptake, testing, mental health, and the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic is having specific impacts on women, racialized populations, and Métis, Inuit and First Nations Peoples. This initiative represents an investment of approximately $25.2 million in 52 research projects.

CIHR is also working with partners to fund research on vaccine confidence in Canada. On March 3, 2021, CIHR, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) launched a special $2.25 million funding opportunity to support activities that promote vaccine confidence in Canada. These activities are expected to improve public understanding of vaccines and help Canadians to make evidence-based decisions, especially among populations that are hesitant about vaccines.
In addition, in June 2021, CIHR launched a $2.4 million funding opportunity to support research that will inform effective strategies to improve COVID-19 vaccine confidence. This funding is expected to help improve vaccine uptake among populations experiencing systemic inequities, conditions of marginalization, Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, Métis and/or Urban Indigenous) communities and/or among populations who are historically under-vaccinated. Notices of decision to applicants are expected by October 28, 2021.
On June 8, 2021, CIHR launched a $3.6 million funding opportunity to improve our understanding of, response to, and recovery from the co-occurring stressful and traumatic events that stem from the current COVID-19 pandemic, and/or restricted conditions associated with public health measures in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with respect to children, youth and families in Canada. The anticipated notice of decision date October 15, 2021.

CIHR is also investing in a series of rolling competitions designed in an iterative way in consultation with partners. These investments are targeting key emerging research priorities and gaps to contribute to Canada’s ongoing response to the pandemic in a flexible and rapid way. While most competitions under this series are set to roll out throughout the 2021-22 fiscal year, the first competition was launched on March 3, 2021 and the second was launched on July 27, 2021. The total funding amount available for this and upcoming COVID-19 Research Gaps and Priorities competitions is approximately $119M. The amount invested in this competition will not be the full amount and will depend on the number and quality, as assessed by peer review, of applications received.

KEY FACTS
• CIHR invested more than $250 million in more than 560 research projects, which focus not only on vaccines, but also on other therapeutics, testing, and transmission dynamics, and other COVID-19 related priority areas as they emerged.
• Further, in March 2021, the government invested $144 million through CIHR to support research that will increase our understanding of persistent and emerging gaps and priority areas – including variants.