Co-creating an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Strategy in a Pan-Canadian Health Data Research...

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) are increasingly recognised as essential to advancing population health research and addressing structural inequities. Yet, few publications describe how to develop IDEA strategies, leaving organisations with limited guidance on replicable processes. Here, Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN Canada) details the steps it took to establish its own IDEA Strategy. The strategy was developed through an iterative five-phase process. Key steps included creating a project charter, defining shared governance and consensus-based decision making, and using professional facilitation to foster broad participation across member organisations. Visible executive sponsorship was critical to strategy development and implementation. The resulting strategy identifies four interconnected action areas: Learning and Unlearning, Facilitating IDEA in Research, Cultivating Trust and Reciprocity, and Providing Leadership and Advocacy to embed IDEA in organisational operations and research practices. HDRN Canada's experience demonstrates how a national distributed research network of organisations that work together to support multi-jurisdictional research can use best practices to transform IDEA principles into a concrete, actionable framework. This work offers a transferable model for population health research organisations seeking to integrate IDEA within their organisations and across the research ecosystem.