The Unit's investigators were mandated to conduct research relevant to 16 health and social service agencies and provider agencies, in two regions of Ontario. The partner agencies helped to plan the relevant research agenda, interpret, disseminate and implement findings. In the former, the community requires access to information so that it can assess the need for and impact of health programs, but it often lacks the methodological and analytical skills necessary for valid interpretation of health data. As a result, a vast amount of the health data they produce is irrelevant, inaccessible, or incomprehensible to planners and policy-makers. Some of these have been aimed at improving the coping ability of the chronically ill, the functional capacity of elderly people being seen by family physicians, the school adjustment of children, the functional outcomes of disabled and chronically ill people receiving community rehabilitation services, health and recreational services for mothers and children on welfare, immigrant women and their families, comparing ESL and LINC classes, and, most recently, the needs of the Kurdish community.
Agencies can participate in joint ventures without one threatening to take over the other.
Research funding from third-party government and private sources can only enhance the enterprise and increase the number of services available to the public. Similarly, the majority of people with chronic illness adjust without a change in their emotional status or their social role. A small proportion of people with chronic poor health or in chronically poor social circumstances consume a large proportion of the formal services offered. Poor adjustment to chronic illness is, in turn, a leading individual characteristic related to the high use of all types of services. When left untreated, poor adjustment is related to persistently high use of services.