The Canadian Armed Forces protects Canada, defends North America and contributes to international peace and security in partnership with our allies. These partnerships are a key part of our national defence strategy, and are also important to how we provide medical care and how we innovate to improve care for our wounded. In the future, different partner nations will contribute modules of medical and surgical capability that will be fastened together to form a solid network of care for our deployed soldiers. Likewise, networks of national and international partners will come together to answer pressing questions to advance trauma medicine, and the care we deliver to our deployed soldiers.
The Canadian Forces Health Services (CFHS) innovates to improve care for our wounded. With our partners, the CFHS innovates in how we deliver prehospital trauma care on the battlefield; we innovate in how we resuscitate and provide surgical care at the field hospital level; and we innovate in how we transport and care for our wounded back in Canada. We also innovate in how we educate and prepare our health care teams for deployment to provide the highest level of trauma care possible.
Much of the research presented in this supplement has been conducted in cooperation with our national and international partners. The Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research is a unique consortium of more than 35 Canadian universities dedicated to researching the health needs of military personnel, veterans and their families. In addition, Canada has several formal and informal research relationships with our allies through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and through the Technical Cooperation Program. We are also now developing research partnerships with the Trauma Branch of the Israel Defence Forces. Defence is now a multilateral and multinational effort. Looking forward, the CFHS will continue to partner with Canadian academic institutions and international collaborators to foster future health care innovation that helps us sustain and shield our fighting forces when they deploy on military missions.
Footnotes
Competing interests: None declared.