THE CANADIAN/UNITED STATES PRIMARY CARE RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP

On this, the 50th Anniversary of NAPCRG, we want to extend our thanks to those who have been members of NAP-CRG over the past 50 years. Change in an organization that has such longevity is expected. One of the greatest changes that took place was the establishment of patient-partner positions (1 American and 1 Canadian) on the NAPCRG Board which evolved from 1998 Policy Statement endorsing responsible participatory research (PR) with communities.^1,2 During all of the changes over the years, the Americans and the Canadians have worked together in partnership to build a sustainable primary care research environment which included members from numerous health care disciplines and patient-partners/community members.

As Dr Carol Herbert³ (President of NAPCRG, 1987-1989) indicated in her commentary published in Canadian Family Physician, we established NAPCRG to facilitate an Annual Research Meeting at which established primary care researchers could: collaborate with their junior colleagues; provide constructive criticism of completed projects and projects-in-progress; discuss research ideas and offer a “safe place” for primary care researchers to ask questions and present data. She also expected that NAPCRG, a bi-national (US and Canada) organization,⁴ would serve as a voice of and for primary care research and potentially as a funder/facilitator for seed funding to support worthwhile projects in the field.

Canada’s representation within NAPCRG is somewhat different from that of the United States’, as 25% of the membership is Canadian. Despite this, proportionate to the number of family physicians, Canadian membership represents a higher proportion of the research-active workforce than the United States. For this reason, the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) is exploring a partnership with NAPCRG to increase the proportion of US family physicians choosing a research career.

Canada was the original partner to bring professionals other than family physicians to the meetings! Epidemiologists, nurses, and social workers engaged in primary care/family medicine research contribute to NAPCRG. Currently, only 30% of the Canadian NAPCRG membership are physician-researchers. The remaining 70% are nonphysician researchers, including those in training and the community and patient partners. Canada rotates the presidency of NAPCRG with the United States every other year. It has elected nonphysician primary care researchers as often as physician-researchers, a distribution of leadership that the United States has not achieved! Canada supports diversity in primary care research, full stop.

As the spectrum of translational research has gained respect in the United States, the National Institutes of Health created the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). At the same time, the PCOR Trust Fund established the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Both intended to augment primary care research. NCATS comfortably places primary care research in the T2-T4 spectrum of translational science and research (Figure 1). What our Canadian colleagues put into practice 30 years ago became codified in the US research structure in 2011! We learn from each other, our multidisciplinary rigor, and the full perspectives involved in improving global health. NAPCRG has been more robust because of our foundational international partnership.

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Figure 1.

Primary care research sits in the T2-T4 translational spectrum of science and research.⁵

• © 2022 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.