NAPCReN Project Selection Criteria

Project Importance

The project should represent an important family medicine or primary health care question(s) that clinicians and/or their patients are currently facing. It should have the potential to improve patient health and/or health services. Clear justification is provided for the importance of the question (e.g. incidence, prevalence, costs etc.)

Methodological Quality

Where a credible methodological review by a scientific peer committee (e.g. CIHR) and the project is in a fundable range, the project will be scored in the excellent/outstanding range.

Ethical and Privacy Considerations

Appropriate REB and operational approvals are required including compliance with HIA.

Project Feasibility

The project should be feasible in the terms of the methods being appropriate for the question(s), the proposed recruitment, timeline, having proposed sufficient funds (and other resources) to successfully complete the project and be ethically sound (ethics approval process must be identified). The project also needs to be feasible in terms of clinic impact (e.g. space and flow).

Study Team

The project must include a University of Alberta Department of Family Medicine faculty member within an experienced study team (appropriate research training, experience and productivity). The DoFM faculty members’ role must be clearly described. The study team must be appropriate in terms of its complementarity and expertise to successfully complete the project as proposed. The project must have the potential for DoFM faculty to have one or more research related outputs (e.g. peer-reviewed publications which meet the authorship requirements of ICMJE).

Increased Reasearch Capacity for the Department of Family Medicine

The proposed research team and research environment (e.g. staff and infrastructure) should encourage quality mentorship opportunities. The project will usually include diverse sites, be relevant and of benefit to participating sites, and the benefits to the sites for participting/collaborating must be clearly stated.

Translation of Knowledge into Practice

The project should include a plan for integrated KT where stakeholders and/or potential knowledge users ar engaged in the entire research process as well as appropriate end-of-grant KT, which includes providing feedback to each participating site.

Potential to Contribute to the Department of Family Medicine’s Research Reputation

The project should have the potential to contribute to the DoFM’s international and/or national reputation for conducting family medicine/primary care research.