News

The Ontario SPOR SUPPORT Unit and McMaster Health Forum have opened the application window for the first offering of the new Masterclass on Evidence Products and Processes (EP2) that Support Rapid Learning and Improvement.

If you’re interested in working as a team to develop innovative evidence products and use innovative processes to drive changes in a health system, please complete the simple online application process. In brief, you’ll need to identify a team of three to five individuals, consisting of one to two researchers, one to two citizen (or patient) partners, and one decision-maker partner (ideally, but not mandatory). We particularly welcome teams that strive for gender diversity and that include racialized and Indigenous individuals.

This first offering of the masterclass will be held every Thursday from 12:00pm to 1:00pm EST from April 14, 2022 to June 30, 2022. By the first session on April 14, your team will need to have provisionally identified a real-world health-system challenge or goal that you want to collectively address and that you will work together to address through the masterclass.

The masterclass has been designed and will be offered by John Lavis and his colleagues at the McMaster Health Forum. Since April 2019, they have been supporting – in partnership with Trillium Health Partners – rapid learning and improvement among Ontario Health Teams through Rapid-Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE). Since April 2020, they have been developing innovative evidence products and processes to respond to COVID-19 through the COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making (COVID-END). Since April 2021, they have been documenting innovations and identifying priorities for improvement in how we use evidence to address societal challenges through their role as the secretariat for the Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges.

Offerings 2-4 will take place in the weeks starting: 26 September to 12 December 2022 (every Thursday 12-1 pm), 10 April to 26 June 2023 (every Wednesday from 12-1 pm), and 25 September to 11 December 2023 (every Wednesday from 12-1 pm). The application window for these offerings will open three months before, but we encourage you to hold the dates if you are very interested in a particular offering.

Further information can be found on the McMaster Health Forum’s: ‘Learn How’ page here.