Michael McGillion Headshot

CIHR grant helps prof spread word on chronic cardiac pain

28 June 2012

Professor Michael McGillion has received a dissemination grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to spread the word about persistent forms of chest pain, including up-to-date research findings and other beneficial information for patients and health care professionals. The project involves a unique, web-based multimedia dissemination strategy featuring citizen engagement.

Severe chronic heart pain is a serious problem that is becoming increasingly common among working-age people. As people live longer with heart disease, the prevalence of persistent cardiac pain grows. There are three main types of chronic heart pains: refractory angina, cardiac syndrome X and sensitive heart syndrome. But no central resource exists to help health care professionals or people living with this pain understand the problem or treatment options. McGillion proposes to fill this void by creating an internet-based resource centre.

“With our internet-based system, we will have the ability to send widespread public email notices, repeated advertisements, mass social media messages as well as special announcements about our cardiac pain resource centre to more than 180,000 health care professionals,” says McGillion. “We’re also securing continuing health professional education accreditation to provide a key incentive for widespread uptake of the resources our centre has to offer.”

The centre will include videotaped discussions with health care professionals and patients on how to get help, as well as downloadable fact sheets containing information about treatments. There will also be teaching slide kits for health care professionals so they can learn more about how to treat chronic forms of heart pain.

A notable aspect of this project is the strategic partnerships with people who live with chronic heart pain, along with organizations such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, the Canadian Pain Coalition and Elsevier’s multimedia publishing solutions division. Shaped by the CIHR framework for citizen engagement, the project emphasizes the key role of affected citizens from across Canada, who will be actively involved in the development of the centre and play a key role in evaluating the dissemination strategy.

The specific objective of this competitive funding is to support the dissemination, exchange and uptake of recently completed, CIHR-funded research. With the creation of the centre, McGillion and his team aim to ensure new information on chronic cardiac pain reaches as many people as possible.