The Maternal Infant Child and Youth Research Network is a federal not-for-profit, charitable organization founded in 2006 to build capacity for high-quality applied health research. It now links 21 maternal and child health research organizations based at academic health centres in Canada; is affiliated with more than 20 practice-based research networks; provides support to new and emerging teams; and has established strong national and international partnerships.

A large amount of research is conducted by teams with investigators based at multiple sites across Canada. Often these groups work independently, in silos, but deal with similar issues and face barriers to conducting multijurisdictional research. MICYRN is working to address these challenges.

MICYRN is unique in the world for this type of collaborative engagement. Working together in a coordinated fashion enables the sharing of innovations and reduces duplication of effort and resource use, which means more funds can be spent on doing research.