Grant: Chair: GlaxoSmithKline Partnered

This application is for a Research Chair in Health Policy at Queen's University, funded jointly by CIHR and industry. Dr. William Pickett is a PhD epidemiologist appointed at the Full Professor level in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen's. Over the last 15 years, he has developed a collaborative program of applied research with competitive funding support from major peer-review agencies, including CIHR. The research program that is proposed here includes three main themes: (1) adolescent health and its determinants in vulnerable populations of children; (2) pediatric health in agricultural and rural populations; (3) emergency medicine and injury control research. A major goal articulated here is to build a collaborative program of epidemiological and associated health policy research centred at Queen's, with specific focus on leading health issues in vulnerable populations of children. This Research Chair will allow Dr. Pickett to provide more concentrated leadership to this new initiative. Findings from the research program will: 1) describe the magnitude of specific health problems, and hence assist with the establishment of societal priorities for prevention and treatment; 2) identify underlying causes and determinants of poor health outcomes in vulnerable populations, which again assists in prevention initiatives such as the generation of health policy solutions; 3) inform the development of evidence-based guidelines for patient care.