Abstract
Background'Evidence-based policy making' for immigrants is a complicated undertaking. In striving toward this goal, federal Canadian partners created the Metropolis Project in 1995 to optimize a two-way transfer of knowledge (researchers – policy makers) within five Canadian Centres of Excellence focused on migrants newly arrived in Canada. Most recently, Metropolis federal partners, including the Public Health Agency of Canada, defined one of six research priority areas as, immigrant 'families, children, and youth'. In order to build on previous work in the partnership, we sought to determine what has been studied within this research-policy partnership about immigrant 'families, children, and youth' since its inception.MethodsAnnual reports and working papers produced in the five Centres of Excellence between 1996–2006 were culled. Data on academic works were extracted, results coded according to eleven stated federal policy priority themes, and analyzed descriptively.Results139 academic works were reviewed. All federal priority themes, but few specific policy questions were addressed. The greatest volume of policy relevant works were identified for Services (n = 42) and Education and Cultural Identity (n = 39) priority themes.ConclusionResearch conducted within the last 10 years is available to inform certain, not all, federal policy questions. Greater specificity in federal priorities can be expected to more clearly direct future research within this policy-research partnership.
Highlights
Evidence-based policy-making has been cited as important in several countries and for a variety of different issues [1,2,3,4,5]
The federal consortium is led by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and currently includes: Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Canada Border Services Agency http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/menu-eng.html, Canada Economic Development for the Regions of Quebec http:// www.dec-ced.gc.ca/eng/index.html, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/, CIC http://www.cic.gc.ca/, Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario http://www.ic.gc.ca/ eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/home, Human Resources and Social Development Canada, http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/ home.shtml/ Department of Justice Canada http:// www.justice.gc.ca/eng/, Public Health Agency of Canada, http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/index-eng.php
Principal findings All federal priority themes but few specific policy questions were addressed in the works produced within the Metropolis partnership between 1996 and 2006 on family, http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/7/1/15
Summary
Evidence-based policy-making has been cited as important in several countries and for a variety of different issues [1,2,3,4,5]. Continued funding for each phase and subsequent phase was based on evidence of success of conducting policy-relevant research within each Centre. This was unable to be measured directly and was based on: the number of researchers and community organizations involved, the number of projects underway, the number of employment and training opportunities offered to graduate students, and stated positive views of the Project in questionnaire responses and focus group meetings with federal funding partners
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