Skip to main content
Impact

We measure research by what it produces — not just where it's published. Our impact spans peer-reviewed knowledge, programs put into practice, funding secured, and communities genuinely engaged. We track traditional research outputs alongside the kinds of change that matter most to the people and organizations we work with.

Impact hero HR

The Living Lab in Action

$5M+

In research funding secured

812

People taking part in DASH stroke program

5

Signature programs in real-world settings

20+

Partner organizations across health, community and voluntary sectors

4

Postdoctoral fellows building their own lines of research

4

Citizen researchers sharing decisions about what we study and how

Tracking Our Impact

The Living Lab turns shared authority into evidence. Every study, statement, and presentation listed here was shaped with and by the people it is meant to serve, not just about them. 

Impact divider HR

Latest Insights

Community Organizations as Implementation Infrastructure

Voluntary, community, and social enterprise organizations have long been treated as supplements to the health system, helpful additions when formal care falls short. Our early work tells a different story. Across stroke rehabilitation and recovery, these organizations are not filling gaps. They are the infrastructure that makes high-quality, person-shaped care possible, particularly during the critical transition from hospital to home. They hold relationships, trust, and community knowledge that health systems cannot replicate. Recognizing and resourcing them as core implementation partners, not peripheral supports, is one of the most important shifts the evidence is pointing toward. 

The Problem Is Implementation, Not Evidence

We have more evidence of what good stroke care looks like than we can put into practice. The barrier is rarely a lack of knowledge. It is the conditions required to translate that knowledge into consistent, equitable care in real-world settings. Early findings from our work suggest that closing this gap requires attention to the structures, relationships, and organizational cultures that shape how care is actually delivered. Implementation science is not a footnote to stroke research. It is the frontier where the most important work remains to be done. 

Wholistic, Person & Family Shaped Care Is the Next Frontier

For too long, stroke care has focused on what can be measured most easily: physical recovery, hospital readmission, length of stay. Our work points toward a broader and more demanding standard. People living with the impact of stroke, and the families who support them, need care that responds to the full complexity of life after stroke. That means attending to identity, relationships, community, and meaning alongside clinical outcomes. Wholistic, person and family shaped care is not a luxury or an add-on. It is the next frontier of stroke health care research and practice, and it is where Care in Common is pointed. 

Partner Spotlights

March of Dimes Canada logo

March of Dimes Canada

March of Dimes Canada brings decades of experience delivering community-based services for people living with the impact of stroke, most notably through their After Stroke program, one of the country's leading community-based stroke recovery services. That experience gives them deep operational knowledge of what it takes to move a service from concept to sustained, real-world delivery. As a partner on the Discharge Assistance and Supports at Home (DASH) study, they help ground the work in this lived service delivery expertise and in what works in community settings.  

Canadian Red Cross logo

Canadian Red Cross

Few organizations understand social connection and community mobilization at a national scale like the Canadian Red Cross. As a partner on the CIHR-funded Volunteer Engagement in Emergency Response Study and the Social Vital Sign Program, the Red Cross brings established volunteer networks, national reach, and credibility with healthcare systems and government that no single demonstration site could build alone. 

BHI

Brain Heart Interconnectome

The Brain Heart Interconnectome (BHI) provides funding that helped make Care in Common possible, and the relationship runs deeper than funding alone. Michelle Nelson leads BHI's Knowledge Mobilization cross-cutter, connecting our work directly to a national research network focused on translating brain and heart health evidence into practice, and to the people and priorities shaping that agenda. 

Pivot logo 2026 RGB WEB

Pivot Design Group

Pivot Design Group is a Canadian experience and service design studio that combines research, strategy, and design to help organizations build digital products and services that actually work for the people using them. Their team translates complex clinical and social research into accessible tools and human-centred platforms that empower nationwide implementation, bridging the gap between academic intent and community impact. PIVOT is an industry partner with the Care in Common Lab and actively supports the Social Vital Sign (SVS) initiative. 

The Value of Lived Experience

Research and health solutions built without the people they're meant to serve rarely fit the people they're meant to serve. The Lived Experience Panel exists to keep our work person-shaped, tested against reality before it reaches the people who need it, not after. 

Involving patients and the public leads to research that better fits real needs and produces more relevant, higher-quality evidence. 

When patients help design a study, researchers report more confidence in the results. 

Lived experience input shapes which outcomes actually get measured, not just how a study is carried out. 

Interventions designed with community input fit better into people's real lives, so they're more likely to stick. 

The earlier lived experience is involved, the bigger the impact, which is why the Panel is brought in from day one. 

“As a caregiver, I know what it's like when the systems around you don't fully see your role, or you, as part of the picture. Care in Common is different. Here, lived experience isn't an afterthought; it's part of how we design the research from the start. I've been at the table from the beginning, building the lab, shaping the questions we ask and how we ask them. This is what research focused on health care could look like everywhere.”

Brina Ludwig Prout, Citizen Researcher & Caregiver Co-Lead

Share Your Learning, Shape Future Materials

None of us is as smart as all of us. If you've got implementation stories, practical insights, or even a "we tried this and here's what happened" — we want to hear it. Co-​create the next generation of resources with us.  

Contribute a Resource Suggest a Topic