THINC-NICE Midterm Workshop Summary
May 25, 2026 | Ottawa
At the mid-point of the Transforming Health with Integrated Care initiative, the Knowledge Mobilization Hub and CIHR-IHSPR hosted and in-person workshop to bring the teams together.
About the THINC-NICE Hub
The Network for Integrated Care Excellence (NICE) is the Knowledge Mobilization and Impact Hub for the Transforming Health with Integrated Care (THINC) initiative — a CIHR-funded program involving 13 Implementation Science Teams (ISTs) working to advance evidence-informed integrated care across Canada. NICE connects teams across the country, amplifies collective research impact, and connects Canadian integrated care efforts internationally through partnerships with the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC) Canada and the North American Centre for Integrated Care (NACIC).
At the midpoint of the THINC grant term, a two-part midterm workshop was co-hosted by CIHR-IHSPR and the NICE Hub. Part 1 was held virtually in November 2025. Part 2 was hosted in-person on May 25, 2026, in Ottawa in conjunction with the annual Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) conference, with approximately 60 participants representing all 13 ISTs, the NICE Hub, and invited program partners and funders.
The workshop was designed with four goals in mind:
- Strengthening connections across teams to deepen shared learning and collective impact
- Situating THINC within a broader vision of research as a lever for policy and systems change
- Centering the perspectives and contributions of people with lived experience as partners in research and throughout the day's programming
- Identifying and strengthening pathways for THINC teams’ integrated care work beyond grant funding
Agenda
Morning
- Land acknowledgement — Louise McDonald Herne, Bear Clan Mother, Mohawk Nation from Akwesasne
- Opening remarks — CIHR President Dr. Paul Hébert and Scientific Director Dr. Rick Glazier
- Hub framing and network update — Dr. Walter Wodchis and Jodeme Goldhar, NICE Hub Co-Leads
- Keynote: Sustainability Beyond Grants — Dr. Diana Royce (President, The Deerfield Group Inc.)
- Decision-Maker Dialogue: Communicating Research for Impact — Dr. Verna Yiu (former President and CEO, Alberta Health Services) & Dr. Deb Matthews (former Ontario Deputy Premier and Minister of Health)
Afternoon
- Panel: Valuing Diversity of Belonging in Research
- Moderated by Maureen Smith (Community Co-Champion, THINC-NICE Hub)
- Panelists: Julie Vizza, Dr. Karen Okrainec, Maddy Dever, Dr. Melanie Penner, Dr. Tracey Carr, and Brenda Andreas — researchers and people with lived experience from across THINC teams
- Peer Exchange Tables — Decision-Maker Engagement & Knowledge Mobilization
Who Attended
Approximately 60 participants joined from across Canada, representing all 13 ISTs, the NICE Hub team, and program partners. Attendance by role:
| Role | Count |
| Investigators & Researchers | 23 |
| Research & Project Staff | 12 |
| People with Lived & Living Experience | 7 |
| NICE Hub Team | 6 |
| Funders & Program Partners | 5 |
| Students & Trainees | 4 |
| Healthcare & Service Providers | 3 |
| Decision-Makers | 2 |
Session Summaries
Opening Remarks
Louise McDonald Herne, Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation from Akwesasne, opened the day with a traditional address that called the room to wrap their minds together as one community. She spoke to the inequities that make this work urgent: Indigenous communities across the country carry some of the highest rates of chronic disease and remain largely invisible in the healthcare system. Her address drew on seven-generation thinking — the principle that decisions must account for their impact seven generations ahead, with health understood as inseparable from environmental connection, community relationship, and cultural continuity.
CIHR President Dr. Paul Hébert and Scientific Director Dr. Rick Glazier reflected on insights from the midterm reports from all 13 ISTs. Patients and caregivers involved in integrated care work are reporting good experiences — these projects are making a difference in people's lives. What's harder to shift is the system around them. Workforce shortages are widespread, and health system decision-makers don't yet have the economic evidence they need to make the argument for broader change. These are the conditions the THINC ISTs are working in and working to change.
Hub Co-Leads Dr. Walter Wodchis and Jodeme Goldhar updated the group on the Hub's work since the last in-person meeting in Calgary in October 2024 including three learning communities, a learning series, and a growing international presence through IFIC Canada and NACIC. They noted that through those partnerships, THINC is part of a wider international conversation on integrated care
Keynote: Sustainability Beyond Grants
“I left the workshop with a sense of urgency to advance this work for our project. It has inspired us to table sustainability as an agenda item during our next Leadership meeting.”
— Investigator
Dr. Diana Royce has spent 25 years helping Canadian research networks and teams navigate what comes after the grant. Her message to the room: doing more of everything is not a strategy. Teams need to make choices about what to carry forward, what to hand off, what to wind down, and how to build community ownership before the grant ends.
Drawing on her experience with Networks of Centres of Excellence, Dr. Royce walked through six pathways for sustaining network impact: securing continued government funding through sustained advocacy; selectively continuing only the highest-value assets and allowing the rest to wind down; grafting specific workstreams onto organizations already doing adjacent work; embedding tools and platforms into new funding contexts; bridging and rebranding to survive transitions; and building a fee-supported community of practice.
Beyond the pathways, she was specific about what works. Start before you think you need to — plan 18 to 24 months ahead, build relationships early, and track data consistently (publications, reach, follower growth) so you can demonstrate relevance when it matters. Get team members onto partner organization boards. Bring in your toughest critics before the formal review. Place trainees inside partner organizations; they become your most effective advocates long after the formal relationship ends. Treat communication as 80% listening. Teams that navigate grant endings well, she argued, treat the transition like a research question: with lead time, data, and a plan.
Decision-Maker Dialogue: Communicating Research for Impact
“Verna's insights were tremendously helpful re: communicating research in challenging systems. The workshop was a good opportunity to connect with other teams and plan future contact to discuss shared challenges.”
— Research Staff
Dr. Verna Yiu (former President and CEO, Alberta Health Services) and Dr. Deb Matthews (former Ontario Deputy Premier and Minister of Health) shared insights about what moves decisions, drawn from their extensive experience making them.
Dr. Yiu pointed to the Alberta Health Services Strategic Clinical Networks model as evidence of what co-designed research can produce. A $20M investment where health system operators were partners from the start generated approximately $180M in gross savings, 143,000 avoided hospital bed days, and $65M in leveraged external funding over six years.
Both speakers were direct about what moves decisions. Politicians need narratives they can carry into legislative sessions: lead with a patient story, then weave in the evidence. Structure the pitch clearly — problem, solution, implementation considerations — and cut everything else; non-essential detail loses time-constrained decision-makers. Credibility matters as much as content: decision-makers get pitched constantly, and honest acknowledgment of trade-offs will take you further than a polished argument. The most effective combination is a person with lived experience alongside a subject-matter expert.
On the political side: cultivate civil servants alongside political staff — governments change, but deputies and assistant deputies stay. Most governments won't commit beyond a single electoral cycle, but operational decisions often don't need public political commitment. System-level change sometimes happens quietly, and you can celebrate it publicly afterward. Tie your research to what systems currently need: capacity creation and workforce.
This session gave participants a chance to hear directly from people who've been on the receiving end of those conversations, and was a highlight of the day.
Panel: Valuing Diversity of Belonging in Research
“The social connections can never be as strong as the bond built by shared experiences. Let us not forget the power of communal meals.”
— Person with Lived Experience
Moderated by Maureen Smith, Community Champion of the THINC-NICE Hub, the panel featured people with lived experience and researchers from three THINC teams: Julie Vizza, Dr. Karen Okrainec, Maddy Dever, Dr. Melanie Penner, Dr. Tracey Carr, and Brenda Andreas. The conversation centred on what it actually takes to shift from consulting people with lived experience to co-producing research with them.
Meaningful engagement requires co-design that can actually change the research — its scope, its direction, its design. People show up differently on different days, and rigid structures exclude participation. Meaningful engagement starts with upfront conversations about what participation means for each person, and it includes the knowledge that lives in stories and experience, not just standard data forms.
The panel was direct about who is still missing. Autism research has historically focused on white boys — girls and minorities remain underrepresented. Large projects cluster in urban centres, leaving rural and remote voices out. Reaching marginalized communities requires active, intentional outreach — you have to go to where people are. Patient partners often function as disruptors through advocacy and activism. The panel was clear: that's a feature of meaningful engagement, not a management problem.
The panel described a longer horizon. Not every engagement produces a visible result immediately — "intimate seed planting," one panelist called it. The goal is radical collaboration: cross-sector partnerships, community leadership development, and research communities that reflect the people they serve.
Peer Exchange Tables
“Changing tables and getting to know other people was the highlight [of the day].”
— Investigator
Participants spent the afternoon in facilitated groups drawn across ISTs, working through shared challenges in decision-maker engagement and knowledge mobilization.
One thing came up early in the conversations: the assumption that decision-makers are senior executives. Teams recognized that frontline managers, community leaders, and people with lived and living experience are also making decisions every day — decisions that shape how implementation actually unfolds on the ground. Each requires a different message, a different relationship, and a different kind of ask.
The same challenges kept coming up across teams: contacts built carefully over months are lost when governments change or reorganize; evidence requests that arrive faster than research cycles allow; the burden of tailoring outputs for multiple audiences without dedicated knowledge mobilization (KM capacity; navigating different political ecosystems across provinces.
Teams named practical approaches: start local and synthesize up, engaging community-level decision-makers first and using those relationships to inform engagement at provincial and federal levels; partner with public affairs professionals who navigate political ecosystems as their speciality; lead with a story grounded in lived experience and bring in the data; acknowledge trade-offs openly, because credibility with decision-makers requires honesty. Groups also named where the Hub can help most: making the network's interconnections visible, helping IST work reach CIHR channels, curating resources on stakeholder engagement, and creating space for connection between formal events.
What Participants Told Us
In evaluation feedback about the day, participants named the decision-maker dialogue and peer exchange tables as the most valuable parts — the chance to hear directly from senior decision-makers, and to connect with colleagues from other teams.
More participants planned to bring sustainability conversations back to their teams than any other topic. When asked what they most wanted from the Hub: practical KM resources, help raising the visibility of their work, and more structured opportunities for cross-team peer problem-solving.
Key Takeaways
1. Teams found real value in hearing directly from decision-makers.
Getting time with people who've made those decisions is hard to come by. Participants consistently named it as one of the most valuable parts of the day.
2. The sustainability conversation has momentum.
Sustainability came up as something teams felt ready to act on. Several said they planned to bring it back to their leadership teams.
3. Being in the room together matters.
What participants remembered most was the chance to connect in person with colleagues from across the country, sitting with someone from a different province working through the same challenge.
4. Teams want practical KM support and help raising their profile.
Teams asked for the same things across sessions: concrete KM resources, help getting their work in front of the right audiences, and the reach that comes with CIHR and Hub channels.
5. Teams want structured peer problem-solving.
Participants asked for more of the peer exchange format: small groups working through shared challenges, drawn from across the network.
Thank you to the researchers, clinicians, people with lived experience, and partners from across the country who participated in the day. The insights and discussions from this workshop will continue to shape the NICE Hub's activities to support the ISTs, including its learning communities and learning series, as the network builds toward the North American Conference on Integrated Care (NACIC 2027) in Toronto.