Dr. Stirling Bryan is Health Research BC’s former Chief Scientific Officer. He recently assumed the position of Interim Executive Director, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.

We live in challenging times, and British Columbia’s health research community is feeling the effects of fiscal constraint, scrutiny of public spending, and pressure on health and research systems to “do more with less.”  

This raises a reasonable question: is optimism about health research still warranted? I believe it is, not because the challenges are trivial, but because BC’s health research community has a purposeful path forward that remains aligned with the needs of the health system and the people it serves. 

I tend to be an optimist, and my optimism is based on a simple but demanding idea: “research that matters.” 

What “research that matters” means 

At its core, research that matters addresses the priority questions of key interest holders in the health system: policy-makers, clinicians, and people with lived and living experience. Today, those questions include fiscal pressures and the need for more efficient care delivery. Research that ignores these realities risks irrelevance; research that engages them offers solutions. 

In a constrained environment, the case for public investment in health research is strongest when research is closely aligned with pressing social and system needs. Optimism comes not from wishing constraints away, but from demonstrating that health research can be part of the solution. 

From this perspective, research priorities matter. One of Health Research BC’s most consequential decisions in recent years was the declaration of four priority themes in 2024: 

  • population aging,
  • climate change and health,
  • public health emergencies,
  • and health human resource challenges. 

These priorities emerged from engagement across the health and research systems, and they were explicitly designed to strengthen collaboration and focus collective effort on challenges facing BC. Of note, these priorities were developed alongside the organization’s commitments to Indigenous-led research and equity, diversity, and inclusion. 

Declaring priorities requires courage, and doing so signaled Health Research BC’s intent to support research that delivers solutions to urgent provincial challenges. All four themes have been supported, but population aging, refined to a focus on seniors’ care, provides a clear example of what research that matters can look like in practice. 

From evidence to implementation 

A commissioned scoping review on seniors’ care found that the problem was not a lack of evidence. Rather, the evidence for effective home and community care interventions was strong, but implementation at scale was lacking. 

This insight shifted Health Research BC’s approach. The organization designed a priority-based funding program focused on implementation. Five multidisciplinary teams have now been funded to implement evidence-based interventions in home and community care for seniors across the province and evaluate the impacts. This offers the prospect of real-world change that improves outcomes while supporting system sustainability. 

The program exemplifies research that matters in several ways: 

  • Alignment with system priorities: It has strong endorsement from government and the health system.
  • System-level leadership: Each team includes a senior health authority executive, embedding commitment and increasing the likelihood of sustained change.
  • Patient-oriented research: All teams meaningfully engage people with lived and living experience, ensuring the work stays grounded in real needs.
  • Learning health system principles: Teams adopt adaptive, feedback-driven implementation approaches, supported by the BC SUPPORT Unit, which fosters cross-team learning and provincial spread. 

A basis for optimism 

Taken together, these elements illustrate why I remain optimistic. In a time of constraint, BC’s health research community is demonstrating focus, collaboration, and a clear line-of-sight to impact. Research that matters does not promise easy solutions, but it does promise relevance and the opportunity to make a difference. That, for me, is a compelling reason to be optimistic about the future of health research in BC.