Clinical Research Projects
POPLAR and the networks within POPLAR also look at clincal research, some exmpales of clinical research projects are below.
POPLAR to help lead pan-Canadian study of outpatient interventions for mild to moderate COVID-19
While public health measures and vaccines have reduced the impact of COVID-19, most scientists predict that new variants will continue to emerge, and that the virus will become endemic. The Canadian Adaptive Platform Trial of Treatments for COVID in Community Settings (CanTreatCOVID) spans 6 provinces across Canada and aims to identify effective and affordable out-patient medications for COVID-19 so that they can be made readily available in community settings, including for those at a higher risk for hospitalization and death.
Currently, the evidence supporting existing medications is weak and provincial guidelines are complex, making decision making by health care providers, provincial decision makers, public health leaders, and patients extremely difficult. Adaptive platform trials (APTs) are designed to concurrently compare multiple interventions and allow the inclusion, exclusion, and removal of treatment arms over time based on a decision algorithm. This makes APTs uniquely suited to studying medications for this novel and dynamic virus.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, APTs have been crucial in identifying what does and does not work in the treatment COVID-19 among in-patients, and CanTreatCOVID hopes to replicate this success at the community level. The trial is open to Canadian residents aged 50 years and older, or between the ages of 18 and 49 with 1 or more chronic high-risk medical condition or immunosuppression. Eligible patients must also be within the first 5 days of experiencing symptoms associated with COVID-19 and test positive for the condition. In Ontario, building on work done in the past 10+ years, POPLAR will be supporting CanTreatCOVID’s multi-faceted recruitment strategy through prospective recruitment of patients using EMR data from its primary care research and learning networks.
Recruitment of patients is set to launch in late 2022. To find out how you and your patients can participate, follow the project through their webpage and newsletter, or on Twitter using #CanTreatCOVID.
AFTERMATH
CIHR Operating Grant: Approaches For ThE pRioritization of patients in priMAry care post-COVID To reduce Health inequities
Featured Projects From Our Networks
OPEN- Dementia
The specific objectives of the project are to: 1. Identify and link dyads (people living with dementia & their caregivers) who each have existing CPCSSN EMR data. 2. Use these linked datasets to study the epidemiology and management of dementia from integrated patient and caregiver perspectives. 3. Report insights to knowledge users in a timely and relevant manner. 4. Facilitate the scaling up of dyad surveillance across the country.
Firstly, the identification of physicians from CPCSSN-participating primary care clinics. Plan on recruiting 300 physicians by the end of the 3rd year. There are approximately 17000 people with dementia in the CPCSSN database in the selected CPCSSN network. Plan to identify a representative sample of 1000 dyads across these networks.
SPIDER- https://www.spiderdeprescribing.com/
The intent of this study is to focus on patient managed in the community with chronically elevated costs, reflecting complexity and persistent unmet needs; and to focus on primary health care, which is longitudinal and relationship based as an ideal setting to improve the care of persistently complex patients living in the community.
The study will be open to practices using any funding model, including fee for service, capitation or salaried; it will also be open to family physicians practicing in either interprofessional or non-interprofessional models. Eligible practices are required to provide comprehensive primary care, be a member of the network in their region and have at least one Primary Care Provider (PCP) in the practice who contributes data to the CPCSSN and consents to participate in this study. All community-dwelling patients aged 65 years and older having had at least one visit in the past two years in the practice of a participating PCP and having had >10 medication prescriptions in the previous 12 months will have their de-identified EMR data included in the outcome measurement
Recent Publications
Chronic Conditions and Socio-Economic Status
Mangin D, Lawson J, Risdon C, Siu H, Packer T, Wong ST, Howard M. Association between frailty, chronic conditions and socio-economic status in community dwelling older adults attending primary care: A cross-sectional study using practice-based research network data. 2022 June (submitted to BMJ Open for publication)
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Research Projects Homepage