Dear Nova Scotia Health Research Community,

The newsletter is the primary method for dissemination of new information, reminders, and updates for the research community. We hope you find our newsletter both helpful and informative. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and content for future editions.

Do you have a friend or colleague working within Nova Scotia Health research who is not receiving our newsletter? They can Sign up here to be added to the mailing list!

Please contact us with any questions or comments regarding research and clinical trials. You can reach us at ResearchQuality@nshealth.ca. We are here to support you!

We’d like to help celebrate your team's wins and successes! Please forward the information to ResearchQuality@nshealth.ca and we’ll include it in the next newsletter.

Continuous consent in research

“Continuous consent" in clinical trials refers to the concept that informed consent is not a one-time event, but rather an ongoing process where participants are continually updated about the study's progress, potential risks and benefits, and can withdraw their consent at any point throughout the trial, ensuring they remain fully informed and can make informed decisions about their participation.

A simple check box with ‘participant is willing to continue in the study’ would suffice in documenting that the participant was asked about their willingness to continue in the research project. See HRPP-SOP-004 Consent Development and Obtaining of Informed Consent for the Nova Scotia Health procedure on continuous consent.

Work instructions

There may be times when an individual research team may require a more detailed process to build upon the process outlined in the HRPP SOP. This is when Work Instructions (WI) comes into play. 

Work Instruction template can be found here.

• Think of a WI as a subset of an SOP that provides documented guidelines for a single action.  
• WI can be created by any team member and typically are approved by their manager or PI.  
• There is no institutional requirement for WI to be signed. This would be a research team decision but should be consistent when WI are created. 
• A work instruction could also be used to ensure consistent practice for a single protocol or related document process for which there is not an SOP in place or need for creation. Check with Research Quality for further discussion. 
• Not all the fields in the masthead of the WI are required (see below). Once again, this can be a research team decision.  

ICH E6(R2) vs. ICH E6(R3)

Have you been curious about the changes from ICH E6 (R2) to ICH E6 (R3) are? See the link to this helpful comparison document for a full summary!

Upcoming HRPP SOP Lunch and Learns

Join us virtually on Teams to learn more about our institutional processes in research. HRPP Lunch and Learns occur every 4^th Thursday of every month from 12-1 pm. Share the link below with your teams.  

March 27: HRPP-SOP-009 Assessing and Reporting Safety and Deviations

April 24: HRPP-SOP-006 Management of Participant Privacy in Research



Teams link 

Meeting ID: 238 800 021 687  

Passcode: J8k9XP  

New HRPP SOP

HRPP-SOP-006 Management of Participant Privacy in Research now published and can be found here, along with previously issued SOPs. Stay tuned for more SOPs to be added in the coming months!

SOPS Needed?

Does your team need an SOP that has not yet been written by HRPP? Please reach out to HRPP@nshealth.ca with your suggestions.

First All Hands Kickoff Meeting

The Research Operations Kick-off meeting from December 2024 may seem like a distant past, but our teams have hit the ground running in 2025.

The HRPP team is spearheading accreditation, SOP writing, and training activities aiming to bring research with human participants at NSH to the highest level. They work closely with Research Education Manager, Andrea Dean, the Privacy Officer Sasha Raz, and the Research Operations Team. Did you know it can take up to 6 months to create, review and approve a standard operating procedure (SOP)? The HRPP SOPs coming out in 2025 will help us all take a giant step towards consistency, compliance, and highest standards of competence in conducting research with human participants. The SOPs are available to all who have access to NSH Intranet or via our Lunch and Learn series coming up last Thursday of every month.

If you are new to clinical research, or even if you are experienced but tackling a new type of research, or short-staffed- Research Operations teams can help! Over and above providing operational support from procurement to study start-up, the Research Operations team can connect you with the right individuals within the organization to help with negotiating and executing contracts, applying for grants, statistical data analysis, biosafety committee (coming soon), and various training resources. Find us at ResearchOperations@nshealth.ca

A few highlighted slides from the Kick-Off Meeting can be found here.

NovaStudies Connect Training Session

We will be holding a NovaStudies Connect training sessions on March 17^th from 10am-11am via Teams. If you have new research staff on your teams that require training, please reach out to  researchoperations@nshealth.ca for more information on the session.

Reminder- New Access to Personal Health Information Form 

The newly approved Access to Personal Health Information (PHI) form is now available and can be found here. It can also be found in ROMEO. If you are going to be consenting participants for access to their PHI for research purposes, please begin to use this form moving forward. Tablets are also available for teams to use for direct participant entry into NovaStudies Connect. Please securely store signed access to PHI forms until they can manually be added into NovaStudies Connect.

More information regarding the change in process will follow. 

Education Lunch and Learns:

The Medical Research Development Office (MRDO) is pleased to announce the 2025 MRDO Post Doctoral Awards Program. In fiscal year 2025/2026, funding is available to support postdoctoral fellows in the following research areas:

• Medical Research (any area)
• Cancer
• Alzheimer's Disease/Dementia
• Cardiovascular
• Ophthalmology
• Mental Health -with preference for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

For guidelines and the application process, please visit the MRDO PDF Awards webpage: https://medicine.dal.ca/research-dal-med/capacity/MRDOPDF2025.html. For any questions or clarification, please email MRDO@dal.ca or Kelly.abbott@dal.ca

CIHR Success Story

Dr. Ejemai Eboreime, along with co-investigators Daniela Meier and Dr. Olga Kits from the Research Methods Unit and Dr. Tara McGee from the University of Alberta and community lead Dr. Cinera States, has been awarded a CIHR Community-Based Research in Climate Change Priority Areas Catalyst Grant—a newly established funding opportunity supporting research on climate change impacts. This marks the first time CIHR has made funding available specifically for community-based research examining the health and social consequences of climate change.

Their study, "Investigating Long-Term Health and Social Impacts of the 2023 Upper Tantallon Wildfire on African Nova Scotian Communities," will compare the experiences of evacuated African Nova Scotian communities with those of other evacuees, analyze environmental injustices and their influence on evacuation and recovery, and identify systemic barriers to equitable disaster response. Additionally, it will quantify changes in mental health care utilization before and after the wildfire.

With a strong focus on community engagement, the study will generate the first evidence-based recommendations for climate-just disaster preparedness, response, and recovery strategies tailored to marginalized communities. By highlighting equity-related issues in emergency management, this research will inform policy improvements, particularly in mental health and community support for wildfire-prone areas.

Beyond its immediate impact, this work will also help position the organization for future funding opportunities in community-based climate change research.

Funding Deadlines

Check out our current funding deadline list, which contains all opportunities for the next three months.

Did you know that from drug discovery through approval, developing a new medicine takes at least 10 years on average and costs an average of $2.6 billion?         

Thank you for reading the Research Bulletin! The next edition will be April 2025.

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