Background: A solid understanding of policy and practice context is key to ensuring research evidence appropriately informs health decisions. Objectives: This presentation will outline the key ways the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) is bringing context into its health technology assessment (HTA) topic prioritization, research process and knowledge transfer. Methods: Context on a potential HTA topic is gathered from decision makers across Canada prior to topic prioritization. Contextual information collected includes: expected level of interest on the topic, potential impact on policy and practice decisions, opinion leaders/collaborators, controversy related to the technology, availability and public-system coverage status; jurisdictional research initiatives, and, variations in rates of use of the technology. This information complements the core systematic HTA topic prioritization process by providing additional context-specific information for consideration. Results: Context information gathered is used by an advisory committee to help prioritize potential HTA topics. It is also used to determine the levels of effort for knowledge transfer, including knowledge translation and the development of tools and tactics to support uptake and use of research evidence. Conclusions: Gathering and using appropriate context around an HTA topic can help improve relevance of HTA topics to better meet decision maker needs, as well as support knowledge transfer plans, tactics and outreach.