Goals

Building Research for Integrated Primary Care in Nova Scotia (BRIC NS) is the Nova Scotia node among the 11 provincial and territorial networks of Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR), Canadian Primary Care Research Network (CPCRN).  

BRIC NS aims to improve health, health equity and quality of life. Its primary goal is to facilitate and amplify primary care research in Nova Scotia through community outreach and engagement activities such as student seminar series, primary care learning series, poster presentations, virtual panels, primary care research conferences and more.  

BRIC NS seeks to engage, mobilize, educate and guide health professionals, researchers, policymakers, students and citizens across Nova Scotia and facilitate collaborative efforts to:

• identify primary and integrated health care priorities that can be addressed through research
• connect and form collaborations with like-minded research teams in other provinces
• develop successful research proposals
• conduct research and disseminate results
• work with policymakers and system administrators as they put the research findings into action

Priorities 

BRIC NS has identified a number of research priorities. These will help to guide the network’s mobilization and facilitation efforts.

1. Integration of care health and social needs

2. Innovations in primary and integrated service delivery

• Optimizing community primary healthcare and integrated care to better meet the needs of patients
  • Service redesign
    • Collaborative teams
    • Chronic disease
    • Comprehensive team for those with very complex needs
      • Mental health
      • Vulnerable children and youth: autism, those in care
      • Disabilities: adult care and adult residential care
      • Dementia
    • Models beyond PHC collaborative team care ready to help those in immediate need
      • E.g. for unattached patients following discharge, major diagnosis …
      • Vulnerable people with nowhere to go for care
• Use of decision aids, tools, technology 

3. Bringing evidence forward for the improvement of effective, efficient and timely care

• Supporting better patient experiences 
• Implementation and quality improvement studies
• What works where and why: attachment of unattached; reducing ED use; easing costs of complexity
• Evaluation
• Knowledge translation
  • Policy, public, research

4. Enabling the primary healthcare workforce to meet the needs of patients and future demands for a range of services.

• Supports to enable efficient, effective team functioning
  • Practice facilitation
  • Staffing (initial recruitment AND retention)
  • Comprehensive teams
  • Integration of community-based services
  • Additional supports for differing practice population case-mix
  • Prevention
  • Key elements of teams to care for those with chronic conditions
• Enhancing provider skills and competency
• Attention to cultural appropriateness and person-centered care
• Family practice readiness needs to better match community needs

Alignment with CIHR’s requirements

• Identify primary & integrated health care priorities to addressed through research 
• Assist in the formation of interprofessional research teams 
• Facilitate local, regional, & national collaborations 
• Disseminate research findings to primary care students, trainees, researchers and other allied professionals 
• Support policymakers, system administrators, clinicians & communities as research findings are put into action 

SPOR Primary Care Network Objectives (last update 2023) 

• Facilitate the reach and adaptation of successful patient-oriented primary and integrated care innovations, based on best practices in implementation science 

• Generate and mobilize knowledge that informs and transforms practice, clinical care and decision-making for better and more equitable health outcomes, particularly for Indigenous and African Nova Scotian peoples and people with complex needs due to multiple, intersecting determinants affecting their health 

• Increase capacity among researchers, clinicians, decision-makers, patient partners and Indigenous communities to develop and apply primary and integrated health care knowledge in practice.  

Last Updated: September 2023