CIHR Health System Impact Fellowships: Application Deadline April 1, 2020

Application Deadline: April 1, 2020

Funding Start Date: September 1, 2020

Full Program Details are available on the CIHR Website by Clicking Here

The Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship (for doctoral trainees and post-doctoral fellows) provides highly-qualified doctoral trainees and post-doctoral fellows studying health services and policy research (HSPR), or related fields, a unique opportunity to apply their research and analytic talents to critical challenges in health care that are being addressed by health system and related organizations (e.g., public, private for-profit, not-for-profit, and Indigenous health organizations that are not universities) outside of the traditional scholarly setting, and to also develop professional experience, new skills, and networks.

The HSI Fellowship provides doctoral and post-doctoral awardees, both referred to as fellows, with a paid experiential learning opportunity within health system and related organizations where they will dedicate the majority of their time towards a co-developed program of work that advances the organization’s impact goals and contributes to improved health system performance. Fellows will be exposed to how the health system and related organizations work, how decisions are made, how research and analytic skills can contribute to an organization’s performance, and the organization’s role in contributing to improved health and health system performance.

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

• Doctoral fellows receive a paid one-year experiential learning opportunity where they are embedded in their health system partner organization for at least 60% of their time focused on an impact-oriented 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 fellows receive a paid two-year experiential learning opportunity where they are embedded in their health system partner organization for at least 70% of their time focused on their impact-oriented program of work. The remaining time (up to 30%), is protected for academic research.

Funds Available

CIHR and partner(s) financial contributions for this initiative are subject to availability of funds. Should CIHR or partner(s) funding levels not be available or are decreased due to unforeseen circumstances, CIHR and partner(s) reserve the right to reduce, defer or suspend financial contributions to awards received as a result of this funding opportunity.

• The total amount available for this funding opportunity from CIHR is $3,090,500 enough to fund approximately 40 awards. An additional $215,000 is available from FRQS, $287,000 from MSFHR and $325,000 from Mitacs. The combined total amount available is $3,917,500. This amount may increase if additional funding partners participate.
• Funds are allocated across two mutually exclusive streams: Stream A: Health System Impact (HIS) Award for Doctoral Trainees and Stream B: HSI Awards for post-Doctoral Fellows. Further breakdown of funding by region and organization is detailed below in Distribution of Funding within Streams.
  • Stream A: HSI Award for Doctoral Trainees: The maximum amount per doctoral award is $50,000 per year for up to 1 year. Of this:
    • Stipend: $45,000
    • Professional development training and research allowance: $5,000
  • Stream B: HSI Awards for post-Doctoral Fellows: The maximum amount per post-doctoral award is $155,000 total for 2 years. Of this:
    • Stipend: $70,000 per year
    • Professional development training and research allowance: $7,500 per year
• CIHR, FRQS, MSFHR and Mitacs will contribute up to a maximum of 70% of the total award value (i.e., $35,000 of the $50,000 doctoral award, and $108,500 of the $155,000 post-doctoral award). See relevant research areas for further information.
• Applicants must secure the remaining 30% of the award value in cash from the host partner organization at the time of application (see Eligibility section). The host partner organization must have the financial resources to support all the applications for which they have committed to providing an experiential learning opportunity*. The host partner is permitted to secure alternative sources of funding (e.g. contributions from other organization(s) interested in supporting the fellowship)* so long as the 30% contribution is confirmed at time of application. Contributions from existing CIHR or Tri-Council grant funds are ineligible.