Towards a Historical Evaluation of Patient-Oriented Research in Canada: how the past informs the present changing the future

It is well known that Healthcare policies, practices, and health research are intertwined. To what extent they are mutually complementary and sometimes interdependent, however, is less clear. This project will contribute to our better understanding of one aspect in the above triad:  why the scientific-medical community has prioritized certain health research policies, such as the patient-oriented framework. How this priority has been justified and how those justifications have changed over time could be evaluated by interviewing key opinion leaders and by examining relevant archival sources. In doing this, we will provide historical analyses of cooperative clinical research and its contexts in Canada, focusing on cancer investigations. We will examine how strategies of a patient-oriented framework have interfaced with the emergence of a more litigious society and the growing pressure for bioethics. Ultimately, this project will provide further evidence for a multifaceted assessment of health systems, which involves socio-cultural and historical factors.