The official slate of virtual research institutes comprising the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has been selected by its recently formed 19-member governing council. Work can now begin in earnest on selecting a scientific director and advisory council for each - a task expected to take approximately two months. Once in place those individuals will be charged with developing specific mandates, marking the official launch of operations.

Announced July 25 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the 13 institutes cover a wide range of human health and live up to the CIHR overriding multidisciplinary approach to encompass all facets of the research enterprise. Governing council held intensive discussions on which areas of health research should be chosen for official institute status, but a decision to keep the overall number of institutes as small as possible means not all made the final cut. For instance, the proposed Institute of Health Ethics was among those that didn't receive sufficient support and was left off the final slate. But that didn't dampen the euphoria many at the announcement clearly felt as CIHR took a huge step towards operational status.

"This is truly a defining moment in Canadian health research," said CIHR president Dr Alan Bernstein.

The CIHR will receive $365 million this FY before rising to $475 million in FY01-02, and Bernstein says that these levels of funding are sufficient to ensure that all 13 institutes are adequately funded in their formative stages. But as the institutes grow and evolve he added that much more will be needed to allow them to reach their full potential, and reiterated the government's tentative commitment to fund health research in Canada to the tune of $1 billion annually. That level will be reached in three to five years, said Bernstein and is equal to 1% of the cost of Canadian health care. Initially, the budgets of all the institutes will be equal, with a set amount devoted to administration and mandate development. As as the institutes evolve, funds will be allocated to where they are required most.

To ensure that all health research funding in Canada is properly coordinated, CIHR will also be responsible for administering the budget of health research-related Networks of Centres of Excellence and relevant chairs within the Canada Research Chairs Program, pushing the FY00-01 budget to $402 million and $533 million in FY01-02. But a CIHR official says the higher totals are largely an accounting procedure and the additional funds merely flow through the CIHR, with decision-making on how they are spent remaining unchanged from past practices.

Where CIHR may run into some difficulty is in the area of peer review. With 13 institutes all requiring expert advice in the awarding of grants to university and hospital researchers, the number of researchers required to conduct the reviews will place increasing strain on the capacity of the research community to fulfill the task.

The Governing Council has named six peer review panels with several more to come. They are: health ethics, law and humanities; health evaluation and intervention; health information and promotion; health policy and systems management; psychosocial and behaviorial determinants of health and, public, community and population health.

Peer review strain was the subject of a recent editorial by Dr Tom Brzustowski, president of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council in Contact , the agency's in-house publication.

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