E-News

CHEPA News is an electronic newsletter published three times a year, and available by subscription or on the CHEPA website. If you would like to subscribe, send an e-mail to chepa@mcmaster.ca. If your e-mail address is changing, please let us know.  

Awards

CHEPA Doctoral students Emmanuel Guindon and Michael Wilson have been granted Rising Star Awards from the Institute of Health Services and Policy Research of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The awards recognize excellence in Canadian knowledge translation or research carried out by graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Guindon earned the award for his paper A second look at pharmaceutical spending as determinants of health outcomes in Canada. Wilson’s award recognizes his work on the PPD/CCNC database, an inventory of systematic reviews of the effects of governance, financial and delivery arrangements within health systems. Guindon and Wilson are both working towards a PhD in health research methodology and are part-time researchers with CHEPA.

CHEPA emeritus Brian Hutchison has received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Family Medicine Research from the College of Family Physicians of Canada. The award honours individuals who have been trailblazers and leaders in family medicine research. Hutchison, who was director of CHEPA from 2002 until his retirement in 2005, has made significant contributions to research addressing the organization, funding, and delivery of primary and community care, and methods for needs-based health care resource allocation.

What’s New

John Lavis will host Cristian Herrara Riquelme, a final year medical student from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, as a visiting scholar for three weeks this summer. Riquelme will focus on research and training related to methodologies and evaluation of evidence-to-policy networks, and gain a better understanding of the Canadian health system.

Phil DeCicca has been appointed a Faculty Research Fellow in the Health Economics Program with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The NREB is the leading non-profit economics research organization in the United States. The Health Economics program emphasizes studies on the economics of substance use, the economics of obesity, economic models of the determinants of health, and the determinants of the cost of medical care.

Spotlight on Research

CHEPA’s John Lavis is partnering with a leading advocate of advancing health research and policy in Africa in a new $1-million project to study how to turn health research into policy in developing countries. Lavis and Nelson Sewankambo, principal of the College of Health Sciences at Makerere University in Uganda, will work together under an International Research Chairs Initiative, a cutting-edge project sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Centre in collaboration with the Canada Research Chairs Program. For details, click here.

Lavis is also a co-investigator with Knowledge Translation Canada, a new $12.2-million national research network bringing together knowledge translation experts from across the country. The network encourages greater collaboration in a field of research that works to ensure people making decisions about health care – including policymakers, managers, health care professionals and patients – are aware of and using evidence to inform decisions. For details, click here.

Presentations

CHEPA director Julia Abelson gave two presentations about involving the public in health system decision-making, to health system advisory groups and executives. In January, she presented Public Engagement in Canada's Health Systems: What Works, What Doesn't and the Vast Terrain in Between, to the Health Council of Canada, and in March, she presented Supporting Community Engagement in Ontario's LHINs at a symposium for LHIN executives sponsored by the Ontario-based Change Foundation.

John Lavis was Lead Faculty for the SUPPORT Workshop on Using Research Evidence in Policymaking, held in Bogota, Colombia in February, and led two international workshops on policy briefs for the Evidence Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet), in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in Paris, France.

He also gave a presentation entitled Supporting the use of systematic reviews by health system managers and policymakers at the 7th Annual Canadian Cochrane Symposium in Halifax in March.

Looking ahead

CHEPA Seminar: Christine Sinding, associate professor in the School of Social Work and the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University, will deliver the monthly CHEPA seminar on May 20, at 12:30 p.m. in HSC-1J8. Her topic is Qualitative Research on Health Care Disparities: Contributions from Institutional Ethnography.

Several CHEPA faculty, including Julia Abelson, Jeremiah Hurley and Michel Grignon, are taking part in the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Health Services Policy Research, in Calgary May 11 to May 14. Hurley and Grignon have organized a session entitled Equity in the Utilization of Health Care in Canada, and Hurley will also present a paper entitled Geographic equity in hospital utilization:  Canadian evidence using a concentration-index approach. CHEPA doctoral students Emannuel Guindon and Michael Wilson will present their work for which they received the IHSPR Rising Star Awards, in a concurrent session at the conference. Andrea Smith and Kathy Li, Health Policy PhD students, will present posters at the conference.

Paul Contoyannis will present a paper entitled The dynamics of health from childhood to adolescence, at the annual conference of the Canadian Health Economics Study Group at the University of Waterloo May 26 and 27. Contoyannis will also present at the annual conference of the Canadian Economics Association at the University of Toronto May 29 to 31. His topic is The impact of physical and sexual abuse in childhood on adult economic outcomes: Evidence from the Ontario Child Health Study.

CHEPA is sponsoring a one-day workshop entitled Health Policy Ethics: Cultivating a Growing Field in Canada, on June 11. The workshop will bring together interdisciplinary scholars and educators interested in developing the field of health policy ethics. For details, click here. The workshop is a pre-conference event for the 20th Annual Canadian Bioethics Society Conference being held in Hamilton June 11 to 14. CHEPA member Lisa Schwartz is co-chair of the conference. The theme of the conference is Just Evidence. For details click here.

The XIIIth International Symposium in Medical Geography is being held at McMaster University July 12 to 17. The scientific program is titled Global Health: Changing Environments, Changing Health. CHEPA member John Eyles is on the organizing committee for the event. For details, click here.

Stephen Birch will chair a session entitled Reality is Horrendously Complicated - Accommodating Complexity in Economic Evaluation, at the 7th World Congress on Health Economics in Beijing, China in July.