Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR)

Quick answer: SPOR is Canada’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research, launched by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 2011 to embed patients as active partners across the whole research cycle. It funds and coordinates that work through two structures: provincial/territorial SUPPORT Units that provide methods, data and career-development infrastructure to patient-oriented researchers, and pan-Canadian SPOR Networks (plus the SPOR Evidence Alliance) that concentrate collaborative research on priority health conditions.

What SPOR is

SPOR (Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research) is CIHR’s national strategy for what it calls patient-oriented research: research that engages patients, caregivers and families as partners throughout the process — setting research priorities, shaping study design, and interpreting and disseminating results — rather than only as the subjects a study is conducted on. The strategy’s stated aim is to get the right intervention to the right patient at the right time, by shortening the distance between research findings and real health-system decisions. This is a Canada/CIHR-specific national infrastructure, distinct from (though conceptually related to) patient-and-public-involvement (PPI) frameworks run by other countries’ funders, such as the UK’s NIHR — see CASRAI’s Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) and Patient partner entries for the general concept SPOR is built on.

How SPOR is structured

• SPOR SUPPORT Units — eleven provincial and territorial organizations (for example the Ontario SPOR SUPPORT Unit and Newfoundland and Labrador’s NL SUPPORT) that give patient-oriented researchers access to methods consultation, data platforms, health-system expertise, patient-partner recruitment support, and training/career development. A researcher planning a patient-oriented study typically works with their own province or territory’s SUPPORT Unit before or during a CIHR application, not with CIHR directly.
• SPOR Networks — CIHR-funded, pan-Canadian collaborative research networks that bring patients, clinicians, researchers and policy-makers together around specific priority conditions, historically concentrated in areas such as youth mental health, primary care, and chronic disease.
• SPOR Evidence Alliance — a pan-Canadian partnership that produces rapid reviews and other evidence syntheses to answer urgent health-system and policy questions, drawing on the same researcher-patient-public partnership model as the rest of SPOR.
• Matched funding — SPOR programs generally rely on a 1:1 matching-funds structure between CIHR and non-federal partners (provinces, territories, health charities, and other funders), rather than CIHR funding SPOR activity alone.

Who SPOR is for

SPOR’s infrastructure is aimed at researchers who want to design or conduct patient-oriented research, at patients and caregivers who want to act as research partners (see Patient partner for what that role does and does not involve), and at clinicians, health administrators and policy-makers who use SPOR-funded evidence syntheses and network outputs to inform care and system decisions. It is not itself a specific grant program a researcher applies to in the way CIHR’s Project Grant is — it is the strategy and supporting infrastructure (SUPPORT Units, Networks, Evidence Alliance, matched funding) that patient-oriented research activity, including some funding competitions, sits inside.

Frequently asked questions

What does SPOR stand for?

Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research — CIHR’s national strategy, launched in 2011, for integrating patients as partners across the research cycle.

Is SPOR a CIHR grant program?

Not exactly. SPOR is the umbrella strategy and infrastructure — SUPPORT Units, Networks, and the Evidence Alliance — that patient-oriented research and some specific funding opportunities operate under, rather than a single named grant a researcher applies to directly.

How is SPOR different from PPI (Patient and Public Involvement)?

PPI is the general practice of involving patients and the public as active research partners, most fully codified by the UK’s NIHR. SPOR is Canada’s own national strategy and funded infrastructure built on that same practice — with its own provincial/territorial SUPPORT Units and CIHR matched-funding structure — not a synonym for PPI generally.

What is a SPOR SUPPORT Unit?

One of eleven provincial or territorial organizations that gives patient-oriented researchers in that region access to methods support, data infrastructure, patient-partner recruitment help, and training.

Related CASRAI resources

• Patient partner
• Patient and Public Involvement (PPI)
• Canada’s Tri-Agency Research Funding System: CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC
• Writing the CIHR Project Grant Proposal

Content verified directly against cihr-irsc.gc.ca (Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research) and the Ontario SPOR SUPPORT Unit (ossu.ca, “What is SPOR?”) on 2026-08-31.