The Government of Canada, through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in partnership with Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC), announced funding on March 24, 2026 to help primary care delivery teams across the country implement and study innovations that improve access to care. Made through the PRIME initiative—Primary Care Reimagined through Impact, Mobilization & Engagement— the investment supports a partnership between CIHR, HEC, and the Canadian Primary Care Research Consortium (CPCRC)—a national network co-led by UBC Nursing professor Dr. Sabrina Wong.

Pan-Canadian effort focuses on access to regular primary care

Dr. Wong serves as Nominated Principal Applicant on the CIHR grant and co-leads the CPCRC alongside Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya, the Frigon-Blau Chair in Family Medicine Research at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. She also chairs both the CPCRC and the BC Primary Health Care Research Network. Her leadership positions UBC Nursing at the centre of a pan-Canadian effort to close one of the most persistent gaps in the country's health system: access to a regular primary care provider. Nearly one in five Canadian adults and 11 per cent of children and youth currently lack that access, creating a gap that strains emergency departments and deepens health inequities from coast to coast. 

 

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"The Canadian Primary Care Research Consortium is proud to partner on PRIME with HEC and the CIHR. This project is working to make visible the innovations in primary care practices across Canada; to understand what innovations they are applying to advance access to care and enhance integrated care. As the lead in British Columbia, I’m excited to work with the innovations occurring in this province and the work being driven by clinicians at the University of British Columbia. "

The CPCRC's ambitions are both practical and far-reaching. The Consortium envisions becoming a home for primary care research in Canada—one that leads innovation, speaks with a united voice to government and the public, and uses a Learning Health System model to bring research findings directly into practice. Its immediate goals are equally concrete: strengthening Canada's primary care data from community to hospital, preparing primary care practices to participate in learning and research, and improving health equity in primary care delivery. Through its pan-Canadian distributed network model, the CPCRC is partnering with more than 40 Care Forward primary care delivery teams across the country—including one Alberta initiative that is expanding the scope of practice of nurses and other providers while supporting the training of more than 200 medical students and residents each year. 

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Closer to home, UBC collaborator Dr. Kendall Ho and his Digital Emergency Medicine team has partnered with BC Ministry of Health’s HealthlinkBC 811 since 2020 to lead a first-of-its-kind virtual physician service integrated with nursing that has served more than 220,000 patient calls over five years, coordinating community-based care, supporting patients’ urgent health needs, and reducing pressure on emergency departments—with an active focus on expanding access for rural, Indigenous, and non-English speaking communities. These examples illustrate what the CPCRC network is designed to enable: successful innovations identified, studied, and scaled across the country. 

It is a privilege to help advance this innovative hybrid primary care model, bringing nurses, physicians, and other health professionals together through digital health technologies to support pan provincial access to both virtual and in person care. Our close collaboration with the Gateway Team-Based Care Teaching Clinic through CPCRC and the BC Primary Health Care Research Network will not only transform how primary care is delivered through this technology enabled, interprofessional approach, but will also enrich the educational environment, preparing trainees for the realities of tomorrow’s clinical practice.  ~ Dr. Kendall Ho

Gateway Health educates future primary care providers 

That same commitment is also shaping how UBC Nursing prepares the next generation of health care providers. 

Opening in mid-2026 in the new Gateway Health Building on the Vancouver campus, the Gateway Team-Based Care Teaching Clinic is designed as a living model of high-functioning, interprofessional primary care — exactly the kind of innovation the federal investment is meant to strengthen. Led by program director Dr. Julie Tipping, assistant professor of teaching, the clinic brings together students and clinician educators from nursing, dietetics, family practice, pharmacy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, clinical kinesiology, and social work. 

 

 

"Our goal at Gateway is not just to deliver care but to redefine how primary care is learned, practiced, improved, and mobilized into practice and policy—together, as teams, with patients at the centre."

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The clinic's model rests on three pillars:

• the development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative models of interprofessional education (IPE) and team-based care;  
• the advancement of interdisciplinary research and knowledge mobilization; and 
• the direct delivery of comprehensive, team-based primary care to Vancouver residents. 

Undergraduate and graduate nursing students—both RNs and NPs—will gain hands-on experience in clinical decision-making as part of an interprofessional team, graduating with the skills and values needed to lead in collaborative care environments. 

With the School of Nursing as its administrative home and funding from the B.C. Ministry of Health, the Gateway Team-Based Care Teaching Clinic reflects the same conviction driving the national initiative: that better primary care begins with educating our next generation of health care professionals to create stronger teams , and a commitment to reaching everyone, not just those who are easiest to serve. 

As Canada invests in closing the gap between the primary care that people need and the care they can access, UBC Nursing is helping to lead that work—nationally, through Dr. Wong's leadership of the CPCRC, and locally, through the Gateway Team-Based Care Teaching Clinic's model of team-based care and education. 

For more information, visit: https://www.canada.ca/en/institutes-health-research/news/2026/03/government-of-canada-invests-3-million-to-strengthen-primary-care-research.html