Grant: Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

This project uses a uniquely comprehensive linkage of population-based health care databases in British Columbia to quantify socioeconomic disparities in drug prescribing and how these disparities influence health outcomes. Three lines of work will be pursued: 1) health services research that documents disparities in inappropriate prescribing of medicines; 2) pharmacoepidemiological work that measures disparities in health outcomes; and 3) knowledge translation work to communicate implications for clinical practice. The research program will study how patterns of medicine use - and, ultimately, patient health outcomes - are affected by factors such as individual's sex, age, income, ethnicity, and place of residence. It will do this for two important types of potentially inappropriate prescribing: antidepressant use during pregnancy and opioid use.This project will produce valuable information resources and first-of-kind quantitative evidence about ways in which biological and social individual factors, operating alone and with other socioeconomic contextual factors, affect patients' health. It will also advance methods and frameworks for using available administrative databases to conduct analyses of pharmaceutical policy issues.