BHI Patient Engagement Award Call for Nominations

Nomination deadline: End of day, May 1, 2026

Extended deadline: End of day, May 8, 2026

Award amount: $1000 CAD

The BHI Patient Engagement Award will honour and celebrate BHI research team members’ outstanding contributions and efforts to integrate, advance, and innovate patient engagement in BHI-funded projects. 

BHI researchers and/or teams engaging patient partners and using best practices in patient engagement and patient partners involved in research projects are encouraged to nominate someone for this award.

Background

In addition to being the right thing to do, there are several other reasons why BHI is committed to PE in research, including that it (1): 

• Results in more relevant outcomes being grounded in patients’ input, experiences and insights; 
• Helps ensure the research is done in culturally safe and respectful ways; and 
• Helps communities and patients see themselves in the research team and in its outcomes. 

BHI uses the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) definition of patient or patient partner as: 

“An overarching term inclusive of individuals with personal experience of a health issue and informal caregivers, including family and friends.” (2)

We recognize that people whose identities include “patient” may prefer other words to describe this part of their identity, such as person with lived experience (PWLE), person with lived and living experience (PWLLE), community member, and more. For simplicity, the term patient is used here to refer to people with brain-heart conditions, and their caregivers (including family and friends).

BHI also uses CIHR’s definition of patient engagement (PE) where:

“Patients become patient partners in the project and can be actively engaged in governance, priority setting, developing the research questions, and even performing certain parts of the research itself. This … helps to ensure that the research being conducted is relevant and valuable to the patients that it affects. Patient partners can also collaborate with the research team to summarize or share the results with target audiences (especially other patients) and with policy makers or other decision makers who may apply the results in a health or community setting.”(2)

To promote rigorous, transparent, and impactful research all BHI projects are required to engage patients unless a reasonable justification for not doing so is provided. 

BHI Patient Engagement Award and its Evaluation

This Award recognizes outstanding and novel efforts to integrate, advance, and innovate patient engagement within a BHI project. The Award will be based on CIHR’s definition of patient engagement in research (found above) and will be evaluated based on the criteria in the Patient-Oriented Research Level of Engagement Tool (3).

BHI members are encouraged to self-nominate, to nominate a team member, or to nominate another team. Patient partners are also encouraged to nominate a BHI team member. We encourage nominations from all research areas and types (e.g., basic research, population health, clinical research, participatory research) and from PI and non-PI members of research teams, including trainees, staff, or patient partners who are involved in patient engagement efforts within any completed or ongoing BHI-funded project.

Nominations will be reviewed and awards decided by members of the BHI Patient Engagement and Knowledge Mobilization Advisory Committee. Committee members bring a range of perspectives as researchers, trainees, patient partners, and other knowledge user partners.