Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Health researchers believe that transportation and poverty reduction programs influence health. These and other big programs like cancer screening and anti-smoking laws are very hard to evaluate. This is because there are an incredible number of things, like your age or income, that could bias the results of the evaluation. To solve the problem of bias researchers use a method called the randomized controlled trial. Randomized controlled trials are the best way to understand how medications or surgeries work and if they should be allowed on the market. But randomized controlled trials have weaknesses when it comes to understanding big programs like transportation or poverty reduction. There are some new research methods that keep all of the good parts of randomized controlled trials and help improve some of their weaknesses for understanding big programs. Unfortunately, these new methods have not been used very much in health research. During my project I will learn and use these new methods to understand how big programs like transportation and poverty reduction influence health. This is important because if our understanding of these big programs is biased we can never be sure if they are good or bad for health. If we can never be sure if they are good or bad for health we will not be able to change these programs and make them the most beneficial for everyone's health.