Stroke network to receive $25.6M to connect research with prevention and treatment

Ottawa, ON – The federal government says it is providing $25.6 million in funding over the next four years for the Canadian Stroke Network, one of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence.

Research funding will be used to support a number of high-impact projects to decrease the physical, mental, social, and economic burden of stroke and to help create efficiencies in the health-care system. Among these efforts is the Canadian Stroke Strategy, a major national initiative to improve the way stroke is managed. The strategy has been developed as a partnership between the Canadian Stroke Network and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

“I want to congratulate the excellent scientists who are participating in the Canadian Stroke Network,” says Dr Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and a member of the NCE steering committee. “The powerful partnerships that NCEs forge with industry, healthcare practitioners, public organizations, and policy-makers ensure that scientific innovations make it out of the laboratory and into the world where they can do the most good.”

Under the direction of CEO and scientific director Dr Antoine Hakim, the Canadian Stroke Network is recognized as a leader in the international stroke effort. Six years into its mandate, the CSN has successfully set up world- class research initiatives, determined the standards in stroke rehabilitation, supported three spin-off companies to develop new anti-stroke drugs, established the Registry of the Canadian Stroke Network – the world’s premier tool to monitor and evaluate stroke care, partnered with the Heart and Stroke Foundation to help ensure research is translated into practice, and created an award-winning training program.

“Clearly, the field of stroke will undergo rapid change over the next several years, in terms of both the new knowledge generated and in how countries organize themselves to cope with the growing burden of this disease,” says Dr Hakim.