CIHR Health System Impact Fellowship 2026

The Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship provides an embedded research opportunity for highly qualified doctoral trainees and post-doctoral researchers studying health services and policy research (HSPR) (or related fields). This is a unique opportunity for awardees to:

• develop their embedded research experience and apply their research and analytic talents to critical health system challenges that are being addressed by health system organizations (e.g., public, private for-profit, not-for-profit, and Indigenous health organizations) outside of the traditional university setting, and
• develop and expand professional experience, enriched core competencies skills, and networks.

While embedded in a health system partner organization for the duration of their fellowship, awardees are exposed to how a health system organization works, how decisions are made, and how research and analytic skills contribute to an organization’s rapid learning and improvement. Accordingly, the program also aims to build embedded research capacity in health system organizations to support the advancement of learning health systems (LHSs) across Canada.

The HSI Fellowship contains a stream for doctoral trainees and a stream for post-doctoral researchers:

• Doctoral trainees receive a paid one-year experiential learning opportunity where they are embedded in their health system partner organization with at least 60% of their time focused on an impact-oriented embedded research project of direct relevance to their partner organization. The remaining time (up to 40%), is protected to continue with their doctoral program commitments*.
• Post-doctoral researchers receive a paid two-year experiential learning opportunity where they are embedded in their health system partner organization with at least 70% of their time focused on their impact-oriented embedded research program of work. The remaining time (up to 30%), is protected for academic research*.
• Both doctoral and post-doctoral awardees also receive:
  • Co-mentorship from a health system leader within the health system partner organization and an academic supervisor at the awardee’s affiliated university.
  • Professional development training in a set of enriched core competencies and networking opportunities by way of participation in the HSI Training Platform and National Cohort Retreat.

Application Deadline: 2025-07-03

Notification of Decision: 2026-02-18

Funding Start Date: 2026-04-01

For Full Details and to Apply online Click Here <external link>