Catalyst Grant : Partnering for Impact (Partnering for Impact 2025-2026)
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with Unit
Memorial Deadline: Monday 20th, October 2025
External Deadline: Thursday 23rd, October 2025
Description
The primary purpose of this initiative is to foster the creation and strengthening of research partnerships that reinforce trust and mutual understanding between researchers, knowledge users (including people with lived and/or living experience, policy makers, decision makers, and health providers), Knowledge Holders, communities, and health and community organizations (including public health). The aim of these partnerships is to advance co-produced research and co-produced knowledge mobilization activities, leading to more relevant and applicable knowledge that is positioned for implementation and impact.
These catalyst grants are intended to support the time and enablers required for meaningful co-produced activities that are driven by the needs of people and communities, knowledge users and/or Knowledge Holders. Of note, co-produced activities should advance health equity and/or other goals of the Quintuple Aim Framework. The Quintuple Aim Framework emphasizes the importance of addressing systemic inequities to optimize healthcare and health systems (including public health systems), and includes goals focused on patient and caregiver experience, provider experience, population health, value-based care, and health equity.
In addition, it is expected that a learning approach be taken to evaluate co-production processes in order to support continuous improvement and contributions to the field of knowledge mobilization. The International Development Research Centre has published one possible approach (Research Quality Plus for Co-Production) for designing, managing and evaluating research co-produced activities, but applicants are invited to select whichever co-production evaluation approach best fits their needs.
Co-produced activities that can be supported through these grants include, but are not limited to, the following examples:
- Conducting iterative engagements with a variety of partners, sectors and/or rights holders to develop a funding proposal for future research or knowledge mobilization.
- Undertaking rigorous research prioritization and/or consensus building processes (e.g., James Lind Alliance).
- Scoping, synthesizing or collecting data to identify areas needing more research and/or knowledge mobilization.
- Evaluating the implementation, spread and scale of knowledge.
- Designing rapid learning and improvement projects within health system and public health system organizations to advance learning health system capacity.
- Fostering partnerships with industry and exploring commercialization potential.
- Producing activities with historically excluded groups including, but not limited to, women, Black and racialized communities, persons with disabilities, First Nations, Inuit and Métis, and members of 2SLGBTQI+ communities. First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples are also distinguished as rights-holders.
- Planning and executing pilot projects or feasibility studies to generate proof of concept and/or preliminary data.
These co-produced activities must address an issue of significance/importance to warrant partnership attention, must be prioritized by a knowledge user or Knowledge Holder (with community and/or organization buy-in), and must result in a useful and useable product or outcome. Applicants are encouraged to describe how inclusive and culturally safe engagement will be fostered, especially when working with communities who experience health inequities.
Research Areas
In addition to funding projects that align with the overall objectives of this funding opportunity*, separate funding pools will also support projects relevant to both the overall objectives AND the following research areas:
*General pool: Those not applying to a specific research area should apply to the General Pool.
Important Dates:
| Competition | 202510PFI |
|---|---|
| Application Deadline | 2025-10-23 |
| Anticipated Notice of Decision | 2026-02-24 |
| Funding Start Date | 2026-03-01 |
Additional information can be found here.