John Lavis
CV
John N. Lavis, MD, PhD, is the Director of the McMaster Health Forum (www.mcmasterhealthforum.org), Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Transfer and Exchange, a Professor (in both the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Department of Political Science), and a Member of the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at McMaster University. His principal research interests include knowledge transfer and exchange in public policymaking environments and the politics of health systems. He directs the Program in Policy Decision-Making (www.researchtopolicy.org), a research program affiliated with McMaster’s Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis, and he wrote the report that underpins the chapter on “linking research to action” in the World Report on Knowledge for Better Health. He teaches an undergraduate course on the politics of health systems for the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) program at McMaster, a simulations course in the same program, and the doctoral seminar for the PhD in Health Policy program. He teaches a week-long module on ‘Promoting the use of research-based evidence in healthcare organizations’ for Canada’s Executive Training for Research Application (EXTRA) program and runs one-day and two-day workshops on using research evidence for governments and international agencies. He is President of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Advisory Committee on Health Research and a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Advisory Committee on Health Research. He is co-editor of the Policy Briefs series co-published by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the WHO-sponsored Health Evidence Network. He is a member of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHSPR) Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, the Cochrane Collaboration’s Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) Review Group, and the WHO-sponsored Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) Resource Group. John holds an MD from Queen's University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Harvard University.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- knowledge transfer and exchange in public policymaking environments
- politics of health systems
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
Lavis JN, Oxman AD, Moynihan R, Paulsen E. Evidence-informed health policy: 1. Synthesis of findings from a multi-method study of organizations that support the use of research evidence. Implementation Science 2008, 3:53.
Lavis JN. How can we support the use of systematic reviews in policymaking? PLoS Medicine 2009; 6(11): e1000141. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000141.
Lavis JN, Oxman AD, Lewin S, Fretheim A: SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP). Introduction. Health Research Policy and Systems 2009, 7(Suppl 1):I1 doi:10.1186/1478-4505-7-S1-I1.
Lavis JN, Davies HTO, Oxman A, Densi J-L, Golden-Biddle K, Ferlie E. Towards systematic reviews that inform healthcare management and policymaking. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy 2005;10(supplement 1):35-48.
Lavis JN, Lomas J, Hamid M, Sewankambo N. Assessing country-level efforts to link research to action. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2006; 84(8):620-628.
TEACHING ACTIVITIES
- Health Systems and Health Policy
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