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Consultation Service

SPARK Impact

Mobilizing Evidence. Driving Real-World Impact.

 

Attention Child Health Researchers

SPARK Impact is Children’s Healthcare Canada’s knowledge mobilization consultation and partnership service, designed to help researchers move beyond dissemination to real-world application and system impact.

We work with you to connect research with the people who can use it—clinicians, health system leaders, policymakers, and families—ensuring your work informs decisions, improves care, and strengthens child and youth health systems across Canada.

 

Why partner with SPARK: Impact?

1. Strengthen your grant success
Co-develop integrated knowledge mobilization strategies that align with funder expectations and demonstrate clear pathways to uptake, use, and impact.

2. Engage the right partners
Connect with diverse audiences—including family partners and decision-makers—to ensure your research is grounded in real-world needs and priorities.

3. Increase relevance and usability
Translate your findings into accessible, actionable formats that support decision-making across policy and practice settings.

4. Extend your reach
Leverage national platforms and networks to share your work beyond academic channels and into healthcare systems serving children, youth, and their families.

5. Amplify visibility and understanding
Use tailored tools, channels, and strategies to ensure your research is seen, understood, and used.

6. Accelerate evidence to action
Move quicker from knowledge generation to implementation—supporting timely improvements in care and outcomes.

7. Maximize system impact
Position your research to contribute to meaningful change across child and youth health systems.

 

 

Our approach

SPARK Impact is grounded in collaboration, co-design, and partnership. We work alongside you and your partners to ensure knowledge is not only shared—but applied in ways that make a difference.

 

The process

Help us help you

Involve us early in your grant development and research process to ensure your approach and outputs are aligned with your target audiences and stakeholders. Priority is given to projects that engage our team well in advance of submission deadlines.

Contact the SPARK team

Recently Supported Projects

Children's Healthcare Canada's SPARK Impact program are collaborating with researchers at the University of Toronto who have been conducting this Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded study conducted on the accessibility of pediatric healthcare to parents with disabilities, including in outpatient, emergency, and inpatient settings. The study uses health administrative data on a population-based cohort of over 1 million births to mothers with disabilities in Ontario as well as interviews with 32 parents with disabilities and 15 healthcare providers. The study is also supported by an advisory committee of people with disabilities, disability advocacy organizations, and healthcare policy-makers. Study findings to date suggest that children of parents with disabilities are less likely to receive well-child visits and routine immunizations and are more likely to visit the emergency department for low-acuity reasons that could have been prevented through better access to outpatient care. Parents with disabilities reported significant barriers accessing pediatric healthcare for their children, including physically inaccessible clinic spaces, communication barriers with providers, transportation issues, and negative provider attitudes about disability and parenting. Providers report inadequate disability training as well as limited time and funding as barriers to making pediatric healthcare more accessible to children whose parents have disabilities. Together, study findings suggest a need to integrate considerations of parental accessibility needs in the creation of family-centred pediatric care approaches.

Children's Healthcare Canada's SPARK Impact program has launched a new collaboration with Drs. Hallie Coltin and Léandra Desjardins of the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre to advance their research project, Supporting mental health in fathers of children with cancer, funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Challenge Grants program.
This project involves fathers of children battling cancer, facing high amounts of stress and uncertainty. Very little research has been done into the mental health challenges these fathers experience and therefore few supports exist that serve their unique needs. Drs. Coltin and Desjardins are studying mental health data and surveying fathers of children with cancer to learn more about their experiences and enable better mental health support.

The University of Calgary is leading an innovative research project titled “Advancing Healthcare for Equity Groups through Electronic Health Records by Disaggregated Data Collection in Pediatrics.” It is funded by the One Child, Every Child Catalyst Grant and led by Dr. Nicole Johnson in the Department of Pediatrics.

The goal of this study is to create a Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data collection tool that can be integrated into pediatric electronic health records (EHRs). This tool will collect disaggregated (broken down into similar groupings) demographic data to better understand how social factors, such as race, income, gender identity, disability, and housing, impact children's healthcare experiences and outcomes.

They are currently recruiting:
  • Youth (16-24 y) who have had an illness/injury/disability that necessitated children's hospital care
  • Family partners of children who've received children's hospital care
  • Healthcare professionals/clinicians working in or with children's hospitals

The focus groups are taking place:

  • August 20th at 11:00 and 15:00 (MT)
  • August 25th at 9:00 and 16:00 (MT)

Reach out to their team to participate or for more information.

About the Project

Services Provided

  • Knowledge User collaborator on 2 studies
  • Survey distribution support
  • SPARK: Live Webinar (1)

About the Project

  • Children's Healthcare Canada member: Provincial Health Services Authority
  • Funded by Health Canada’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Fund
  • Website: https://www.transcarebc.ca/

Services Provided

About the Project

Services Provided

  • Partner / Decision maker on research team 
  • SPARK: Live Webinar (5)
  • Policy Brief
  • SPARK: Newsletter posts (5)
  • Breakfast session at Children's Healthcare Canada's Annual Conference

About the Project

Services Provided

  • Knowledge Mobilization partner on research team 
  • SPARK: Live Webinars (4) 
  • SPARK: Newsletter posts 
  • Access to Children's Healthcare Canada's Practice and Policy Networks 

About the Project

Services Provided

  • Recruitment support of mentors from our diverse membership through SPARK: News and other elements of the SPARK Knowledge Mobilization program 
  • Designated representative from Children's Healthcare Canada leadership to participate as an active member on the Platform Advisory Council 

About the Project 

Services Provided

  • SPARK: Newsletter posts (2) 
  • SPARK: Live Webinars (2) 
  • Convene and facilitate a peer network of program/ unit managers/ directors
  • Peer network supports (ie: landing page and content on Children's Healthcare Canada website, dedicated in-person meeting space at Children's Healthcare Canada annual conference) 
  • Access to the Children's Healthcare Canada's diverse Practice and Policy Networks