Welcome
Welcome to the CIHR Training Program in Bridging Scientific Domains for Drug Safety and Effectiveness!
This training program bridges biosciences, clinical therapeutics, population health, epidemiology, biostatistics, and health services and policy research to better understand choosing, using, and losing medications within the context of medication safety and effectiveness.
Effective solutions to challenging medication-related issues are more likely to be generated when looking through a broad lens. Scientists trained in conventional science or clinical programs require a broader understanding of how drugs are used in real world practice and policy once they take up their posts in academia, industry or government. New approaches in molecular pharmacology, nanotechnology, biomarkers, biotherapeutics, pharmacogenetics and other areas are rapidly changing the way drugs are discovered and used. As drugs become more expensive and more personalized, drug policy decision making faces new and more difficult challenges. To address these challenges, there is an urgent need to train scientists who can integrate concepts and findings across the drug discovery, applied clinical practice and policy spectrum.
The program offers opportunities for trainees across a broad spectrum of domains to learn together and from each other as a key impetus for filling the critical void of skilled, knowledgeable researchers in the area of therapeutics.
DSECT was established through the CIHR Strategic Training Initiative in Health Research program. The Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN) assumed responsibility for funding DSECT on August 12, 2011. This is in recognition that one of DSEN’s mandated activities is to increase capacity in Canada to support drug safety and effectiveness research. Funding DSECT allows the further development of collaborations with the training and research activities of other DSEN funded research teams.