COVID-19 is creating unprecedented challenges for Canada’s health care providers. With scarce supplies and stressful working conditions, they need our support more than ever.
The CMA Foundation is responding, by granting funds to support the work of frontline physicians and medical professionals, targeting critical needs within the health care system as a result of COVID-19, including:
- Improving health care practices at long-term care homes;
- Supporting the work of physicians and other health care workers in hospitals, both large and small;
- Innovation in family medicine practices;
- Aiding the physician-led international response.
Hospitals
$5 million to support the Frontline Fund for Healthcare Workers, to ensure that health care workers on the frontline of Canada's largest hospitals can access the resources they need when they need them.
$5 million to support health care workers at the frontline of community hospitals, through a fund set up by the CMA Foundation.
Together, this funding is providing medical equipment, supplies and supports such as personal protective equipment, digital infrastructure for virtual care and counselling to frontline workers at more than 240 hospitals.
Family medicine
$5 million was granted to the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine (FAFM)’s COVID-19 Pandemic Response and Impact Grant Program (Co-RIG).
Phase I funded 15 projects targeting immediate and short-term innovations that help maximize the effectiveness of care during the pandemic, while protecting health workers safety.
Phase II funded 12 projects that prepare family physicians and their interprofessional teams to cope with challenges related to the pandemic and its longer-term impact. Projects involve scaling up existing innovations and propelling new initiatives that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Long-term care
$2 million was granted to the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement (CFHI) to support the LTC+: Acting on Pandemic Learning Together program. Its goal is to help people working in long-term care make immediate improvements to reduce the spread and impact of COVID-19 in LTC facilities.
Physicians abroad
$250,000 will go to the Doctors Without Borders’ COVID-19 Emergency Fund, to honour the doctors who provide essential medical care to people in places where pre-existing health systems cannot reach.