Partnership for Population Health and System Sustainability

Over the years, the strong and continually growing partnership between the University of Northern British Columbia and Northern Health has supported clinicians, researchers, educators, community members, and health services administrators in working together more effectively and in alignment with the goals of service quality, population health, and system sustainability. The partnership creates and will continue to build an environment that is attractive to existing and new health professionals – be they clinicians, administrators, researchers, and/or educators. The list of partnership successes includes: working with funders like the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the Canadian Institute for Health Research to undertake a variety of clinical and health services research initiatives and to establish structures/processes that facilitate research translation; collaborating with the BC Ministry of Health Services on a 5-year grant project to develop a BC Rural and Remote Health Research Institute; establishing the infrastructure (relationships, structures, processes) for highly distributed didactic and clinical training that will serve as the foundation for future programming; and developing and supporting in-class and clinical training across the spectrum of nursing care. The recent formalization of the partnership through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding and the joint development of an Innovation and Development Commons will continue to focus the organizations on alignment in terms of health and health system improvement.