Grant: Foundation Grant

Confidence in Canada's health care and public health systems has been eroded by evidence of the country's declining performance across a range of measures of healthcare delivery and population health. Further, given rising healthcare costs, it is increasingly important to identify which resource investments will result in the greatest benefits for the health of Canadians and health delivery systems. The challenge for decision makers is how to use the best available data to estimate the impact of various prevention and healthcare approaches on overall health and economic outcomes. To address this gap, my program will develop new measures of health system functioning and practical tools to inform system planning using large, linked databases of health, social, and cost-related information. These outputs will offer an innovative and meaningful way to examine how well the health system is functioning (e.g., at what cost and for whom?), health inequities among Canadians, health system inefficiencies and priorities for action. To ensure that our findings are relevant and useful, my research program will provide analyses directly to team of senior health and social decision makers who can use the results and tools developed to weigh the costs and benefits of various cross-sectoral strategies. A key the strength lies in working with decision makers from multiple provinces and across various sectors (e.g., health care, public health, social services), which will result in solutions that are integrated across the broader system and at various levels (e.g. regionally, provincially). Ultimately this proposal offers a promising way to effectively improve population health and efficiently use health resources to optimize health system synergy and population impact.