The Friends of Canadian Institutes of Health Research is born!

A Brief History

In 1996, Dr. Henry Friesen, then president of the Medical Research Council (MRC) of Canada, encouraged a group of former MRC awardees to form an alumni association to promote MRC goals and values and thereby enhance its profile.  The Association was established as an independent corporation dedicated to the purposes of Council and to the broader objective of expanding community understanding of the importance of health research to the well being of society.  The organization has grown continuously and is made up of both active members and corporate partners.   It published a widely read newsletter that informed Members of Parliament, Senators, university Presidents and research Deans about MRC’s activities.   Alumni and Friends of MRC, our predecessor organization, actively sought out community-based organizations that shared its interests in state-of-the-art medical research and collaborated widely with a variety of like-minded organizations, including National Health Research Awareness Month, the Association of Canadian Teaching Hospitals, and the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges (ACMC).  

The formation of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in mid-2000 was a turning point for AFMRC, and in anticipation of this dramatic transformation of Health Research funding in Canada, our members felt strongly that we must support its introduction and, at the same time, help preserve the high values and research standards so well maintained over MRC's 40 years of operation.

We canvassed the opinions of our members and friends, and concluded that our organizations' work must continue to support the new CIHR.  Further, it was important to develop a new mandate appropriate to the goals and structure of this new research body.  The majority of members felt the need to seek out new partnerships beyond its previous focus on the medical community and link up in a broader health research paradigm.  Members felt strongly that we should expand to include individuals and organizations that represent all health disciplines.    Finally, there was the obvious need to reinvigorate ourselves and reshape our identity to reflect a relationship to CIHR and hence the name change

As a result, we have adopted a new set of goals that reflect our vision and commitment to CIHR, the preeminent organization that funds health research in Canada.