Vitalité's Maritime SPOR Support Unit

The Maritime SPOR Support Unit (MSSU) supports patient-oriented research as part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR). To achieve this, the MSSU uses a collaborative approach, drawing on the perspectives, knowledge and expertise of the many stakeholders working in the health sector across the Maritime provinces. True to its mission, the MSSU is committed to ensuring that government policy-makers, health authority decision makers, health care professionals, researchers, and patients and caregivers are always at the table with a common goal: to improve, through patient-oriented research, health care and health outcomes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Vitalité's MSSU team builds on existing research capacity to provide additional expertise in patient-oriented research. It does this in a number of ways: by providing expertise in best practices for patient engagement in research; by offering tools, resources and strategies to help initiate, guide and direct researcher-patient collaboration at all stages of a research project; by offering training on the values and principles underlying patient-oriented research; and by supporting access to the extensive health administrative data held at the New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training (NB-IRDT), a provincial data centre located in Fredericton. This is complemented by recognized skills and abilities in research methods, evidence synthesis and knowledge translation. What's more, Vitalité's MSSU team is the only one of the five MSSU teams to offer services and support in both official languages. The offices of Vitalité Health Network's MSSU team are located at the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre.

The MSSU is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness, the New Brunswick Department of Health, the Prince Edward Island Department of Health and Wellness, Research Nova Scotia and Re

searchNB (formerly the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation).