“Patients used to be called subjects in clinical trials. We don’t use that word anymore,” explains Linda Hunter, CANTRAIN National Stream Lead, Community Partners & Patients Stream. “Patients aren’t just participants in clinical trials: they can be partners, they can be advocates, or they can be leaders in clinical trials. Patient partners can also mentor junior and senior researchers, because they bring not just their lived experience, they bring their lived expertise.”

An executive health care leader and former Chief Nurse Executive and ICU nurse, Linda Hunter’s work at CANTRAIN champions the different ways in which patients and community partners, including those from diverse and marginalized groups, can be part of making the clinical trials field more equitable. As a patient herself, who has lived for years with chronic disease, as well as being an essential caregiver to her mother who lives with dementia, Ms. Hunter brings her lived experience to the role of designing training programs at CANTAIN which elevates the status of patients in clinical trials.

Such a focus on patients as active partners will be central to the 2025 Clinical Trials Training Summit, organized by four clinical trials training programs (CTTPs) – CANTRAIN, StrokeCog, CAN-TAP-TALENT, CBITN) – and taking place in Vancouver, BC on February 24-26. “We are having people from around the world give an explanation of what they’re doing in patient engagement in research, from a European perspective with an organization called EUPATI, from an American perspective with an organization called PCORI, and then from a Canadian perspective with our Passerelle SPOR. And we’re looking at how to create sustainability for patient engagement and research in a global way.”

Hunter is also organizing the patient-focused Summit session “Patient Partners as Co-Leaders in Clinical Trials” with Dr. Caroline Jose, which will contain a participatory research exercise: “We’re asking all the people in the audience to envision a brighter, better future, asking them the question ‘What could the ultimate patient engagement and research look like, with patients as co-leaders in clinical trials, in your mind?’ And just having them – whether they’re a trialist, principal investigator, student, patient partner, or research professional – envision that, and call out what that looks like to them.”