News

• Who are you calling old? Evolving thinking challenges policy planning

  24 Apr 2014

  
  How do you plan programs and services for old people when ‘old’ is an evolving concept?

  Amanda Grenier, who holds the Gilbrea Chair in Aging and Mental Health at McMaster, notes that the structures and frameworks around which society organizes and responds to older people are increasingly blurred. Chronological age, for example, is no longer considered to mark ‘aging’, but meanwhile many of the socio-cultural notions and eligibility requirements for services continue to be based on age.

  She will discuss some of the key issues underlying planning efforts in policy and practice for older people at a CHEPA seminar on Wednesday April 30. The seminar will be held in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Mulvale, O’Reilly receive Early Researcher Awards

  15 Apr 2014

  Two members of CHEPA’s faculty are among 11 McMaster professors to receive Early Researcher Awards (ERA) from the provincial government.

  Gillian Mulvale, left, Assistant Professor, Health Policy and Management at the DeGroote School of Business, and Daria O’Reilly, right, Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University and Faculty Lead of the MaRS Excellence in Clinical Innovation and Technology Evaluation (EXCITE) Program, within the Programs for Assessment of Technology in Health (PATH) Research Institute at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (SJHH), are among those recognized by the ERA as promising researchers with the potential to become world-class innovators. Both women joined CHEPA’s faculty in the summer of 2012.

  The ERA will enable O’Reilly to conduct research to find ways to spend resources more efficiently in treating diabetes. Mulvale’s work uses smartphone technology to help families and service providers deliver coordinated services for adolescents with mental illness.

  The Early Research Award funds each recipient to a maximum of $140,000 by the provincial government, with matching funding of $50,000 from McMaster, over the next five years.

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• Register now to learn how academic research shapes healthcare

  02 Apr 2014

  How does research influence health reform? Find out by joining host Brian Hutchison at New Frontiers in Health Policy Research: A Graduate Students Conference, on Saturday, April 12 at McMaster’s CIBC Hall, where you’ll hear some of Canada’s leading health policy-makers and analysts describe how academic research shapes the healthcare of the future. To see the agenda, click here.

  Keynote speaker Antonia Maioni, associate professor, Department of Political Science, Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University, will present her analysis of how research influences health policy reform. A former Canada-US Fulbright scholar at Harvard, Maioni is also a political analyst for CTV News and contributor to the Globe and Mail.

  The conference also features talks by a roster of well-known health policy experts -- John Abbott, previously CEO of the Health Council of Canada and a former Deputy Minister of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Health and Community Services; Vasanthi Srinivasan, executive director of the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) support unit and former assistant deputy minister, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care (MOHLTC), and Alina Gildiner, Project Leader, Health Workforce Evidence & Innovation Unit, Health Workforce Policy Branch, Health Human Resources Strategy Division, MOHLTC. They will speak about their professional experiences using research to support policy-making. Join them and moderator John Lavis, director of the McMaster Health Forum and Knowledge Translation expert, for an enlightening discussion.

  In addition to the prominent keynote and panel speakers, an exciting central part of the conference will be hearing an array of selected graduate students from area universities presenting their own innovative health policy research for discussion and critique. There is no charge to attend and lunch is included. To register, click here or contact Lyn Sauberli, sauber@mcmaster.ca

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• Seminar looks at the links between obesity and immigration in Europe

  02 Apr 2014

  Research into the links between social inequality and obesity, comparing immigrants and natives of France and Spain, is the subject of an April 16 CHEPA seminar presented by Yasser Moullan, research officer at the International Migration Institute, University of Oxford (UK).

  The seminar will be held Wednesday April 16 in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Seminar scrutinizes drug cost-effectiveness analysis programs

  20 Mar 2014

  In pharmaceutical regulation and policy, evidence-based policymaking uses a particular tool: the economic evaluation of drugs, where experts assess the cost of drugs relative to their therapeutic benefits, and make funding decisions on this basis. However, programs vary markedly in their goals (especially related to achieving value for money or standardizing access to care) and their mandates.

  In a seminar titled Cost-effective drugs: paradigms and policies in Australia, Ontario, Canada, and the UK, Katherine Boothe, PhD, assistant professor of political science at McMaster, presents research comparing the adoption and reform of cost-effectiveness analysis programs in four jurisdictions.

  The seminar will be held Wednesday March 26 in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Register now for New Frontiers in Health Policy Research conference

  18 Mar 2014

  Register now for New Frontiers in Health Policy Research: A Graduate Students Conference, being held at McMaster University on Saturday April 12^th, at McMaster’s CIBC Hall.

  Sponsored by CHEPA and the McMaster Health Policy PhD program and intended to become an annual event, this inaugural one-day conference is the only Canadian graduate student conference in the field and is a unique opportunity to hear graduate students present innovative research to an audience of peers and receive constructive feedback. There is no charge to attend and lunch is included.

  Antonia Maioni, pictured, Ph.D, associate professor, Department of Political Science, Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University will give the morning keynote address. The afternoon discussant panel features John Abbott, CEO of the Health Council of Canada; Vasanthi Srinivasan, executive director of the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) support unit and former assistant deputy minister, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care (MOHLTC), and Alina Gildiner, Project Leader, Health Workforce Evidence & Innovation Unit, Health Workforce Policy Branch, Health Human Resources Strategy Division, MOHLTC.

  To register, click here or contact Lyn Sauberli at sauber@mcmaster.ca

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• Engaging with Indigenous Peoples topic of CHEPA seminar

  12 Mar 2014

  Using good engagement practices to enhance policy-making in a way that includes Indigenous Peoples and knowledge is the topic of a CHEPA seminar presented by Danielle N. Soucy, director and program coordinator of McMaster’s Aboriginal Students Health Sciences (ASHS) office.

  How to engage with engagement: The Aboriginal Students Health Sciences (ASHS) and CHEPA looks at the effective use of public involvement practices in the context of First Nations, Inuit and Metis healthcare priorities.

  The seminar will be held Wednesday March 19 in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.  All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Grad students invited to submit abstracts for New Frontiers in Health Policy Research conference

  04 Mar 2014

  New Frontiers in Health Policy Research: A Graduate Students Conference will be held at McMaster University on Saturday April 12^th, at McMaster’s CIBC Hall. Sponsored by CHEPA and the McMaster Health Policy PhD program and intended to become an annual event, this inaugural one-day conference is the only Canadian graduate student conference in the field and presents a unique opportunity for graduate students to present innovative research to an audience of peers and receive constructive feedback.

  Antonia Maioni, Ph.D, associate professor, Department of Political Science, Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University will give the morning keynote address.

  The afternoon discussant panel features John Abbott, CEO of the Health Council of Canada; Vasanthi Srinivasan, executive director of the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) support unit and former assistant deputy minister, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care (MOHLTC), and Alina Gildiner, Project Leader, Health Workforce Evidence & Innovation Unit, Health Workforce Policy Branch, Health Human Resources Strategy Division, MOHLTC.

  Abstract submissions are welcomed from graduate students conducting policy-relevant research in the following areas:

  • Health economics
  • Political science
  • Sociology
  • Research methods
  • Global health
  • e-Health

  Please email a PDF file with the subject heading “New Frontiers in Health Policy Research” describing your presentation (objectives, approach, results, conclusion) in no more than 300 words to Lyn Sauberli at sauber@mcmaster.ca

  The deadline for abstract submissions is Friday, March 14, 2014. Notification of decisions is Friday, March 21, 2014.

  For more information, contact Lyn Sauberli at sauber@mcmaster.ca

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• Seminar looks at Ontario health services research, knowledge translation

  21 Feb 2014

  Health services research and knowledge translation in Ontario is the topic of a February 26 CHEPA seminar by Michael Hillmer, director of the Research, Planning and Analysis branch of the Health System Strategy and Policy Division of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

  Hillmer, who has a PhD in clinical epidemiology and a Masters degree in Pharmacology from the University of Toronto, directs the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care's health research portfolio. He will explain how the Ministry invests in health services and population health research to ensure an innovative environment where evidence informs policy development and decision-making by supporting and sustaining local research capacity.

  The seminar will be held Wednesday Feb. 26 in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Seminar examines health care funding reform through a different lens

  21 Jan 2014

  Patient-based funding (PBF) is a healthcare funding approach that has gained international recognition by demonstrating a number of favourable outcomes including improved access to care, decreased healthcare costs and higher quality care. Leaders who demonstrate a vision and a commitment to PBF are considered key to successful PBF implementation, but to date little work has been completed in this area.

  In a Feb. 5 CHEPA seminar, McMaster nursing professor Pamela Baxter will present findings from a systematic review conducted on leaders’ experiences implementing PBF in acute care settings, talk about the results of pilot work conducted in Ontario and share plans for a large mixed methods study.

  The seminar will be held Wednesday Feb. 5 in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Guindon joins CHEPA as Chair in Health Equity

  15 Jan 2014

  CHEPA welcomes Emmanuel Guindon as the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis/Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Chair in Health Equity.

  The appointment, offered to a “dynamic early- or mid-career scholar who will lead an innovative research program focused on the production and communication of policy-relevant research that addresses issues of equity and efficiency in health and health-care, at the individual or systemic levels,” is for a five-year renewable term. 

  Guindon was previously an assistant professor in the Département d’administration de la santé  at Université de Montréal, and Chercheur régulier, Institut de recherche en santé publique de l’Université de Montréal (IRSPUM).

  The faculty appointment is secured by an endowment jointly funded by CHEPA, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University.

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• CIHI is all about data: CHEPA seminar tells how to make it work for you

  10 Dec 2013

  The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has a wealth of statistical information waiting to be mined. 

  On Dec 18^th, Jeremy Veillard, CIHI’s vice-president of research, presents It’s all about the data: What CIHI can do for you and what you can do with CIHI data – today and tomorrow.

  This seminar outlines what CIHI data sources are available for researchers and students and what its plans are for data acquisition, access, integration and timeliness. He also looks at what CIHI is doing with the data and what data sets Canadian researchers might be able to put their hands on in the future.

  The seminar will be held on Wednesday Dec. 18 in CRLB 119 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Seminar addresses research implications of sex and gender analysis requirements

  12 Nov 2013

  Funding agencies increasingly require sex and gender analysis to be included in health services and policy research. The implications this trend poses for researchers will be the topic of a CHEPA seminar presented by faculty member Meredith Vanstone.The seminar will be held on Weds.  Nov. 20 in CRLB 119 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.
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• Seminar looks at how health shocks affect employment

  06 Nov 2013

  Vincent Pohl, assistant professor of policy studies and economics at Queen’s University, will on Friday Nov. 8 discuss the results of his study: The effect of health shocks on employment: evidence from accidents in Chile.

  The research used administrative employment data and hospital records to estimate the causal effect of health shocks on employment. Pohl says external health shocks such as accidents served as a source of exogenous variation in the study. To control for employment trends, he matched treatment and control groups on observables and employed a difference-in-differences strategy. The estimates show that health shocks reduce employment by about three percentage points. Women, individuals with little education, and those with severe shocks were found to be most affected.

  The seminar will take place on Friday Nov. 8 from 3 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. in Econ KTH 334.

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• New online journal analyzing health reform initiatives publishes first issue

  16 Oct 2013

  The online journal Health Reform Observer – Observatoire des Réformes de Santé (HRO-ORS) developed by CHEPA director Michel Grignon, who serves as its editor-in-chief, has published its inaugural issue.

  HRO-ORS is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal, publishing concise, plain-language analyses of individual health reforms related to the governance, financing and delivery of health care in the Canadian provinces and territories, as well as in-depth, cross-issue and cross-jurisdictional “roll-ups” of these reforms.

  The first issue contains four peer-reviewed articles:

  • Implementing Lean Health Reforms in Saskatchewan by Gregory Marchildon;
  • Assessing Ontario’s Personal Support Worker Registry by Audrey Laporte and David Rudoler;
  • Delisting Medical Imaging in Private Settings from Public Coverage in Québec by Amélie Quesnel-Vallée;
  • Legislating Interprofessional Regulatory Collaboration in Nova Scotia by William Lahey.

  Health Reform Observer - Observatoire des Réformes de Santé does not charge fees to readers or contributors. For information concerning submissions or to express interest in joining the team of reviewers, please contact the journal’s managing editor, Nancy Johnson, at hro_ors@mcmaster.ca

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• Effectively combining population and survey data topic of CHEPA seminar

  08 Oct 2013

  Surveys done for health services and economics research purposes, including those taken as part of clinical trials, often suffer from poor response levels or attrition and this may prompt researchers to weight the data. Survey results may also not reflect situations where the interview subjects have similar characteristics, for example when the respondents are predominantly women.

  In an Oct. 16 CHEPA seminar, economics PhD candidate Qing (Felix) Li will describe an approach that combines both population and survey data using a method of moments technique that matches auxiliary moments of the two data sources to estimate micro-econometric models. He provides Monte Carlo evidence to show that the approach can appreciably reduce both bias and variance.

  Li will show how this technique can be used in a health human resource context by describing how it was used to analyze factors associated with students’ decisions to drop out of the Ontario Midwifery Education Program (MEP). The high dropout rate in this academically and professionally challenging program is causing a lack of access to midwifery care for an estimated 2,425 Ontario women each year.

  The seminar will be held Wednesday Oct. 16 from 12:30 in CRL B119, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. The seminar will be available remotely for those who are unable to attend.

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• Labelle Lectureship: How austerity kills

  24 Sep 2013

  A pioneering public health expert will describe how countries hit hard by the global financial crisis have damaged the health of their citizens with economic measures taken to balance budgets and stabilize financial markets, at the 22^nd annual Labelle Lectureship.

  David Stuckler, Senior Research Leader in Sociology at the University of Oxford, England, and author of The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, will be the guest lecturer at the event on Oct. 2, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in room 1A1 of the Health Sciences Centre. All are welcome to attend.

  The Labelle Lectureship is an annual event organized by CHEPA, the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the Programs for Assessment of Technology in Health Research Institute. It was established in 1992 in memory of Roberta Labelle, a founding member of CHEPA who died in 1991. The annual lectureship features a health services researcher with emerging recognition and an interdisciplinary approach to research.

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• CHEPA seminars resume with a look at measuring health system efficiency

  29 Aug 2013

  The first CHEPA seminar of the new academic year will be held on Sept. 18, when Sara Allin, a senior researcher at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and CHEPA director Michel Grignon will describe measures used to examine health system efficiency in Canada.

  The seminar, Measuring efficiency in Canada's health system, draws from a study that brings together data on health spending and health outcomes at the regional level to examine health system efficiency in Canada using data envelopment analysis (DEA). It also explores the environmental and health system factors that help to explain variations in efficiency across the country.

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• Meredith Vanstone joins CHEPA faculty

  13 Aug 2013

  CHEPA’s faculty recently welcomed Meredith Vanstone as a
  new member. Vanstone, who is an assistant professor with McMaster’s Department of clinical epidemiology & biostatistics, was a post-doctoral fellow at the centre in 2012-13.

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• A year of celebration and change

  16 Jul 2013

  CHEPA marked a fiscal year full of milestones and challenges last year. Read about them in CHEPA 2012-13 in review, an annual summary of the centre’s events and achievements.
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