Research and Knowledge Transfer Hubs: Overview

To build province-wide research capacity in mental health and addictions, the Network has provided funding to develop four Research and Knowledge Transfer Hubs:

Alcohol and Drug Monitoring Hub

The BC Alcohol and Other Drug Monitoring project aims to describe the main patterns of alcohol and other drug use and related harms in British Columbia. This Hub is coordinated jointly by the Network and the Centre for Addictions Research of BC (CARBC). The contract for this project is managed by BC Mental Health and Addiction Services on behalf of Health Canada and other national and provincial funding partners. This BC-based pilot project is paving the way for a comprehensive, national monitoring system that can be applied in various jurisdictions across the country.

Available datasets include: the Canadian alcohol and other drug use monitoring survey, data on addiction treatment systems, enforcement, alcohol consumption, school surveys, drug analysis, high-risk populations, emergency departments, and mortality and morbidity.

Visit the project website at www.aodmonitoring.ca

Clinical Research Hub

The Clinical Research Hub is designed to assist researchers in the selection and employment of measures to assess cognition, substance use, and severe psychopathology. The goal of the Hub is to enhance data quality while providing a forum for researchers and trainees to communicate and collaborate. The Hub is accessible to researchers both within and outside of areas traditionally thought of as mental health, and is comprised of four key components:

• A comprehensive Library of clinical measures and scales, many of which are available for loan to researchers anywhere in BC. The loan service may be useful to those who want to review and test out a particular measure before purchasing it.
• Consultation and Review Services, provided for researchers free of charge
• A searchable Research Inventory, containing details and contact information for BC-based research studies that employ measures of cognition, substance use or severe psychopathology in clinical populations
• Training and Education resources on how to properly employ clinical measures

Visit the Hub website at www.mhanet.ca/crh

Community Based Research Hub

Launched in March 2009, The Community Based Research (CBR) Hub aims to increase capacity for CBR in mental health and addictions by providing access to CBR-specific training, resources, and networking opportunities. The goal is to encourage community-university partnerships and support research practices that benefit research participants and contribute to tangible change.

The Hub’s programs and activities entail five key elements: an ongoing CBR needs assessment, an online directory of CBR resources, and CBR-specific training, networking, and funding opportunities. The design and delivery of these elements will be developed to reflect the feedback received from our ongoing community consultations.

Visit the Hub website at www.mhanet.ca/cbr

Pharmacoepidemiology Hub

The Pharmacoepidemiology Hub is a resource for researchers interested in using BC’s prescription database, PharmaNet, to study patterns of utilization of pharmacological agents in the treatment of mental illness and addiction. This Hub is coordinated jointly by the Network and the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction (CARMHA).The Hub provides:

• Support and advice on the ability of PharmaNet data to answer researchers’ question(s) of interest.
• Information regarding procedures for accessing PharmaNet data
• Standardized procedures for linking PharmaNet data to other administrative databases
• Basic analytic methods

The Hub has launched a Wiki to facilitate the use of PharmaNet data in mental health and addiction research. The Wiki seeks to address many challenges that researchers face in utilizing PharmaNet, by developing and maintaining expertise in procedures for accessing, linking and analyzing PharmaNet data.

Visit the Hub Wiki at http://pharmawiki.mhanet.ca/.