[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Hutchison.jpg” caption=”Brian Hutchison”]Brian Hutchison, director of the McMaster Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA), has been chosen as the recipient of the 2004 Health Services Research Advancement Award.

The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) accepts public nominations for the annual award, which recognizes an individual, team, or organization that has contributed significantly to the advancement of the health services research community in Canada.

“Brian Hutchison's successes in building collaborative partnerships among researchers, learners, and decision makers make him a highly deserving candidate for the CHSRF Health Services Research Advancement Award,” said one of the nominators, Janusz Kaczorowski, research director in the Department of Family Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster.

Kaczorowski and 15 co-nominators submitted an impressive list of Hutchison's contributions to health services research in the nomination application. As well as serving as CHEPA director for the past three years, Hutchison is the initiator and co-director of the Community Care Research Centre (CCRC), McMaster's site director for the Ontario Training Centre in Health Services and Policy Research (OTC), and the Medical and research advisor at the Hamilton Community Care Access Centre. He is also a family physician and a professor in the Departments of Family Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster.

Kaczorowski says Hutchison is recognized internationally as a leader in his field and has made a major contribution to research addressing the organization, funding, and delivery of primary and community care and methods for needs-based health care resource allocation.

“I feel very honoured and pleasantly surprised,” said Hutchison, who has received other notable awards throughout his career, but acknowledges this award as the most gratifying he has received.

“The award is particularly meaningful to me because it's open to a broad range of researchers and decision-makers, many of whom I know and have tremendous respect for.”

Hutchison says he has made linking with decision makers a priority in his work. “I want my research to be relevant to the concerns of decision makers and to be useful in the decision making process.”

An outstanding example of this is the Community Care Research Centre, a collaboration of McMaster researchers from Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities and Business with 35 Hamilton agencies. “The community partners are not just collaborators in research but shape the research agenda and are full partners in the whole process,” he said.