News

International doctoral students to enhance their training through Health Policy PhD program

sjohnston — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:10:56 GMT

The first of four students from Africa who are joining McMaster’s Health Policy PhD program (each for a one-year period) through the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) grant held by CHEPA Associate Director John Lavis has begun his studies here.

Pierre Ongolo-Zogo, from Cameroon, is a doctoral student at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and holds both an MD and a master’s of science degree. Through an exchange agreement between Makerere University and McMaster, he is enrolled as a doctoral student in the Health Policy PhD program from January through December 2012.

Three other students will arrive at McMaster later this year or early next year to participate in the PhD program. Rhona Mijumbi, who is also a doctoral student at Makerere and is currently working with the Regional East African Community Health (REACH) policy initiative, and André Zida, a doctoral student working for the Ministry of Health and the Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) in Burkina Faso, are both expected to begin studies at McMaster in the coming year. A fourth student will be selected at a later date.

The student exchange program supports students from one university enrolling in the other university while paying tuition only at their home university, and is one feature of the $1-million IDRC funding announced in 2009 for Lavis and Nelson Sewankambo, principal of the College of Health Sciences at Makerere University. The IDRC is funding study of knowledge-translation platforms in low- and middle-income countries. An agreement between McMaster and Makerere universities supports cooperation on the study, particularly the parts being executed in 10 African countries.

In addition to enrolment in the Health Policy PhD program, the IDRC has facilitated the African students’ participation in other educational endeavours and attendance at research meetings. They have attended courses on topics such as monitoring and evaluating research evidence in policymaking, preparing policy briefs, finding and using systematic reviews and grading the quality of research evidence in various cities including Kampala (Uganda), Lusaka (Zambia), and Maputo (Mozambique).

The IDRC funds are also providing additional training opportunities for four other students enrolled full-time in the Health Policy PhD program at McMaster. Doctoral stipends, travel and field work expenses have been provided for:
• Jessica Shearer, a third-year PhD doctoral candidate who has travelled to Kampala, Lusaka and Maputo for course work, and to Burkina Faso for field work for her thesis project on social networks, research evidence and innovation in health policymaking;
• Kaelen Moat, a third-year PhD doctoral candidate who has attended courses and research meetings in the same cities, to advance his thesis work on evidence briefs as a mechanism for knowledge transfer and exchange;
• Edward Gariba, a second-year PhD student who has attended short courses and research meetings in Kampala and Maputo in preparation for his thesis work on user testing, usage and impact of Health Systems Evidence and the Evidence-Informed Policy Network Virtual Health Library (EVIPNet VHL); and
• Liz Alvarez, who joined the PhD program last fall, and will begin her short course work in Addis Ababa later this year, as part of her work around knowledge translation from evidence to health care policy in low- and middle-income countries.

The IDRC, in collaboration with the Canada Research Chairs program, launched the inaugural International Research Chairs program in 2009 to pair top research talent from universities in Canada with their counterparts in developing nations, to share their advanced skills and knowledge to confront issues of common concern, while mentoring a new generation of scholars and practitioners.

Sewankambo, who is a highly regarded leader in the health field and holds an honorary doctorate from McMaster, holds the International Research Chair in Evidence-Informed Health Policies and Systems.

Public health researcher from University of Edinburgh visits CHEPA in January

sjohnston — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:52:11 GMT

Katherine Smith, a lecturer with the Global Public Health Unit at the University of Edinburgh, will be a visiting scholar with CHEPA in January 2012, and will give the CHEPA monthly seminar on Jan. 18.

Smith’s research interests include processes of knowledge transfer (particularly between research and policy), policies and interventions to tackle health inequalities, and the influence of corporations and advocacy organizations on public health and policies affecting public health.

During her visit at McMaster she plans to learn more about the relationship between health research (particularly public health research) and policy in Canada. She plans to meet with public health researchers, policymakers and those involved in knowledge transfer.

Her seminar entitled The politics of ideas: The complex relationship between research and policy in public health, will be based on a research paper that examines the complex relationship between research and policy, using the interdisciplinary field of health inequalities as a case study.

The paper challenges claims that U.K. policies on health inequalities have been based on evidence. Drawing on an analysis of 42 major policy statements and 61 interviews with individuals involved in health inequalities research and policy, the research findings suggest that ideas about health inequalities that are based on research, but not necessarily on evidence, have travelled into policy.

Smith will explain the crucial difference between evidence and research-based ideas. Once ideas become separated from the evidence on which they were based, they become more malleable and can be transformed as they travel through the process to becoming policy.

Her research indicates that a failure to understand the complexity of the relationship between research and policy in the U.K. has meant that recent efforts to ensure research is ‘policy relevant’ appear to be having an unintentionally conservative impact on research innovation.

The seminar will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in CRL-B119, and all are welcome to attend. For those who can’t be present, remote access to the seminar is available through Elluminate. Click here for details on how to log in to listen to the seminar.

Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, Smith worked at the University of Bath, where she focused on tobacco industry policy influence in the European Union, and at the University of Durham, where she focused on evaluating policies and interventions intended to reduce health inequalities in the U.K. Her PhD studies at the University of Edinburgh explored the relationship between health inequalities research and policy in Scotland and England.

For more details on Smith’s background, click here. Anyone who would like to arrange a meeting with Smith during her visit can email her directly at ksmith18@staffmail.ed.ac.uk

11-03

Sjohnston — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:34:57 GMT

Gafni A, Birch S, Buckley G Economic Analysis of Physician Assistants in Ontario: Literature Review and Feasibility Study Available in PDF

Role of data centre in McMaster-based research subject of CHEPA seminar

sjohnston — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:25:28 GMT

Recent health-related research conducted in the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at McMaster – which provides researchers with access to a wealth of survey and administrative data – will be the subject of the CHEPA monthly seminar on Dec. 14.

Byron Spencer, academic director of the centre that provides researchers with access to master files of all the major household surveys conducted by Statistics Canada, will lead the seminar to take place from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in CRL-119.

He will explain the resources of the centre, which houses confidential data in a secure site. Included are files from the National Population Health Survey and the Canadian Community Health Survey, as well as files based on administrative records from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, some of which have been linked to survey data. Permission to access the centre is granted only to researchers whose work requires the use of the master files.

In addition to information about the centre, the seminar will describe research that has been conducted with linked survey and administrative records. Topics addressed will include unmet need in health care utilization, and health status, hospitalizations and physician costs associated with body mass index.

Spencer is a professor in the Department of Economics, and director of the Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, at McMaster. He has a PhD in economics from Rice University, and his current research is focused in the Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Program. He has published extensively on the impact of population change on the economy, on our social security system, and on the future need for health care services as the population ages.

He will be joined in the presentation by two CHEPA faculty members: Jeremiah Hurley, chair of the Department of Economics, and Jean-Eric Tarride, an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and investigator with the Program for Assessment of Technology in Health.

Everyone is welcome to attend the seminar. For those who are unable to attend, remote access to the presentation is available through Elluminate. Click here for details on how to log on to hear the presentation.

Faculty members Birch, Gafni ranked among world's top economists

sjohnston — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:56:12 GMT

Two current and three former CHEPA faculty members have been ranked among the most influential health economists in the world, in a report prepared for the World Bank.

Stephen Birch and Amiram Gafni, both long-time members of CHEPA, and Bernie O’Brien, a CHEPA faculty member who died in 2004, are included in the top 100 health economists in the world, based on a measure of health economics publications and the number of times they have been cited.

Birch and Gafni were tied for 35th on the list with several others, and O’Brien was tied for 44th.

The rankings were compiled as part of a working paper produced by the Human Development and Public Services Team, Development Research Group, of the World Bank. Authors Adam Wagstaff and Anthony J. Culyer looked at the growth of research in the field of health economics over the past 40 years, reported on the changing topics and geographical focus in the field, and compared authors, countries, institutions and journals in terms of the volume of publications and their influence as measured through various citation-based indices.

The list of top 100 health economists was based on a particular metrix, the ‘h-index’. The index combines the number of articles published and the number of citations of the most cited articles of an author or an organization. Created initially to rank physicists, it is now one of the most widely used citation-based summary measures of scholarly influence.

Based on the criteria used by the authors, Birch was an author on 30 publications that have been cited more than 1,000 times in the last 40 years. Gafni had 37 publications with nearly 1,200 citations, and O’Brien had 24 publications with more than 1,250 citations.

Two of CHEPA’s founders were also listed in rankings included in the report. In the list of the top 300 most-cited publications by topic, George Torrance’s 1986 publication entitled Measurement of Health State Utilities for Economic Appraisal: A Review, was ranked 11th overall, and was the most cited paper among the 30 publications on the topic of economic evaluation, included in the list. Another of his publications, Multi-attribute Preference Functions: Health Utilities Index, was ranked 118th overall, and 10th within economic evaluations topic.

David Feeny, another of CHEPA’s founders, also had a paper in the list of most-cited publications. His 1995 report Multi-attribute Health Status Classification Systems: Health Utilities Index, was 83rd on the top 300 list.

Michel Grignon, director of CHEPA, said the rankings in the report are an indication of the significant impact CHEPA faculty have made over the years on the field of health economics research.

To view the full working paper, click here.

Impact of uncertainty in science on policymaking focus of CHEPA seminar

sjohnston — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:55:27 GMT

The ways in which science responds to environmental problems and ultimately informs policymaking will be the subject of the CHEPA monthly seminar on Nov. 16.

Michael Egan, an associate professor in the Department of History at McMaster University, will draw on a current research project examining the regulating of mercury pollution since the Second World War, for this presentation entitled The Politics of Expertise (or, When Scientists Disagree): Uncertainty, Agnotology and Haste in Twentieth-Century Mercury Science.

Agnotology is the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

Egan’s talk will concentrate on the problem of the need for scientific knowledge after an environmental problem surfaces, and the difficulties associated with creating knowledge under such time constraints, especially when it will have immediate policy implications. He will discuss a series of case studies in which scientific expertise clashed, how consensus wasn’t achieved, and why. He will also outline how uncertainty manifests itself in science and how that ultimately undermines its authority in the political arena.

Egan’s research is predominantly focused on the science of environmental crises. His current research concentrates on the history of science and global environmental governance, particularly as they pertain to toxic legacies. He is director of the Sustainable Future History Project, which is predicated on the idea that in order to fully understand the social, political, economic and ecological extent of our contemporary environmental crisis, we need to be conscious of its historical context.

Egan, who has a PhD in environmental history from Washington State University, has written extensively on the intersections of science, environmentalism and social justice in the 20th century, and is the author of Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism.

The seminar will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Room B119 in the Communications Research Laboratory. For those who are unable to attend, remote access to the seminar is available through Elluminate. Click here for details on how to log on to hear the presentation.

OTC progam supports research of PhD doctoral candidates

sjohnston — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:30:00 GMT

Stephanie Montesanti, who is in the fourth year of McMaster’s PhD in Health Policy program, has been accepted into the Ontario Training Centre (OTC) program for 2011-12, with funding provided through the Population Health Improvement Research Network (PHIRN).

Through this opportunity, she will become a PHIRN affiliate, and will be included in the network’s database of population health researchers in Ontario. OTC is one of four centres in Canada designed to increase the number of well-qualified health services and nursing researchers at the master’s and PhD level.

Montesanti hopes to increase her understanding of community participation initiatives involving marginalized communities in local health system planning. Community participation in local health system planning decision-making has been viewed as an essential strategy to improve the design and planning of health care services, particularly in areas perceived to be underserviced.

Her doctoral project involves a multiple case study analysis of community health centres in Ontario. She hopes this work will provide a better understanding of effective community participation strategies that influence local health system planning, and in turn optimize population health and reduce health disparities in marginalized community.

Montesanti is part of the inaugural class of the PhD in Health Policy program that was launched in 2008 and is unique in Canada. She is supervised by CHEPA faculty member Julia Abelson.

She earned her master’s in medical anthropology from the University of Toronto. Her previous experience working with community-based organizations on research projects in population health and community health interventions includes international development projects.

Two other second-year students in the health policy PhD program have been accepted into the graduate diploma program at OTC, in health services and policy research. Daniel Patino, who is supervised by John Lavis, will use the program to complement his education, particularly in regards to methodological tools. Sarah Boesveld, who is supervised by Julia Abelson, plans to use her involvement in the program to network with health professionals working in policy settings, and will partake in a policy-related internship.

Mike Wilson joins CHEPA faculty

sjohnston — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:14:00 GMT

Mike Wilson, whose research focuses on supporting the use of research evidence in health systems, has been appointed a CHEPA faculty member.

Wilson was also recently appointed a part-time assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatics, and assistant director of the McMaster Health Forum, and is an investigator with the Program in Policy Decision-making (a CHEPA-affiliated research program).

He holds a PhD in health research methodology and a B.H.Sc. (Hons.) from McMaster University. He has also studied political science at the University of Toronto.

Wilson’s efforts to support the use of research evidence in health systems has a specific focus on community-based organizations and health system managers and policymakers. He is also interested in research related to the politics of healthcare systems and the social determinants of health for people living with HIV/AIDS. He helped lead the development of Health Systems Evidence, a continuously updated repository of syntheses of research evidence about governance, financial and delivery arrangements within health systems, and about implementation strategies that can support change in health systems.

During his studies at McMaster, Wilson earned numerous awards, including an Outstanding Thesis Award, the Dean’s Award for Graduate Student Knowledge Translation and Innovation, and the Faculty of Health Sciences’ Graduate Student Entrepreneur Award, Graduate Programs Outstanding Achievement Award and Graduate Programs Excellence Award.

He was also the recipient of a Rising Star Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in 2009, for his work on what is now known as Health Systems Evidence.

In addition to his work at McMaster, Wilson works with the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, as a scientist in health policy and Knowledge Transfer and Exchange.

Meredith Lilly awarded Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship

sjohnston — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:19:00 GMT

Meredith Lilly, a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University who is supervised by CHEPA faculty Arthur Sweetman, has been awarded a prestigious Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue her research on the role of family caregivers who look after people with long-term health conditions.

The fellowships valued at $70,000 over two years are administered by Canada’s three research granting agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The program aims to attract and retain top-tier postdoctoral candidates, and develop their leadership potential. Lilly was one of 70 candidates who were granted the award, from a field of more than 650 applicants.

Lilly is studying the long-term impact of caregiving on labour force participation; the trade-off between paid formal care and unpaid informal care provision; and the influence of care setting on family caregivers’ labour supply. This work builds directly on her doctoral research which demonstrated the importance of controlling for caregiving intensity in the study of these issues.

At McMaster, she has also been working on a variety of issues pertaining to health human resources in the province of Ontario. In addition, she collaborates with researchers in British Columbia and Alberta on several projects pertaining to the organization and delivery of health-oriented housing models for seniors and individuals with dementia.

Lilly earned a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Toronto. She received the CIHR Institute for Health Services and Policy Research Article of the Year Award in 2009, and a CIHR Institute of Aging Age+ Prize in 2010, for publications produced from her dissertation.

Potential for universal drug coverage in Canada subject of Labelle lecture

sjohnston — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:02:49 GMT

A researcher with expertise in pharmaceutical policy will describe how the changing market for generic drugs presents a unique opportunity for Canadian governments to introduce universal coverage, at the 20th Annual Labelle Lectureship.

Michael Law, a faculty member with the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at UBC, will be the guest lecturer at the event on Oct. 5, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

While Canadian medicare has historically provided universal first-dollar coverage for physician and hospital services, public coverage for prescription drugs is limited. This mix of public and private insurance left Canadians paying $4.6 billion out of their own pockets for prescription drugs last year. Law will share his recent research that estimates this expense resulted in more than two million Canadians not taking their medications as prescribed.

There have been numerous recommendations to expand public drug coverage over the past 70 years. However, the costs of such reform have long been seen as a barrier to policy action. Law will use research he has conducted to argue that there is now a unique window of opportunity to bring about change, and that providing universal coverage for some drugs in a politically saleable fashion that would both save money and improve the health of Canadians.

The discussant for the lecture is Helen Stevenson, president and CEO of the Reformulary Group Inc., a company dedicated to helping manage prescription drug costs for employer drug plans. She has previously worked as executive officer of Ontario Public Drug Programs, and an assistant deputy minister of health in Ontario.

The lecture will take place in room 1A1 of the Health Sciences Centre. All are welcome to attend.

Law, who is also an assistant professor in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC, is a health services researcher who specializes in program evaluation, research methods and statistics. His research interests focus on pharmaceutical policy evaluation, direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and private drug coverage in Canada.

He earned his PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University, a M.Sc. in health population and society from the London School of Economics, and is a graduate of McMaster’s Arts and Sciences program. Before joining UBC, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Drug Policy Research Group at Harvard Medical School, and a research associate at the Centre for Health Services Research and Policy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

The Labelle Lectureship is an annual event organized by CHEPA, the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatics, and the Programs for Assessment of Technology in Health Research Institute. It was established in 1992 in memory of Roberta Labelle, a founding member of CHEPA who died in 1991. The annual lectureship features a health services researcher with emerging recognition and an interdisciplinary approach to research.

First monthly seminar of 2011-12 to explore using research to effect social change

sjohnston — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 06:00:57 GMT

The ways in which research may become a vehicle for social change when it is rooted in concern for equity and social justice will be the subject of the first CHEPA monthly seminar for the 2011-12 academic year.

Nancy Doubleday, the HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Department of Philosophy at McMaster University, will draw on her work focused on the Arctic region and the people who live there, for her discussion entitled Walking the Talk: Research as Praxis for Advancing Peace and Health. The seminar will take place on Sept. 21, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., in CRL-B119.

Doubleday will share formative examples from this work as a means of illustrating how research can effect social change when it is situated within adaptive frameworks and is part of the co-production of knowledge.

She will lead a discussion to explore strategies for engaged praxis – a synthesis of theory of practice – for advancing peace and health. The need for such a synthesis is motivated by the complexity of relationships and processes (social, cultural, ecological, and economic) conducive to healing and leading to peace and health.

By taking a complex systems approach to peace studies more generally, it is possible to build on the ‘McMaster approach’ to health sciences education, founded on the belief that the study of health encompasses not only the problems of illness, but also the impact of biological processes, environment and lifestyle on the individual, the community, and society. The community-oriented, people-centred, interdisciplinary and problem-based approach familiar to health sciences and related fields at McMaster, resonates strongly with elements of current and previous research using action research and action learning strategies. Arctic examples provide helpful illustrations of ways to view research as pathways for transformation toward peace and health.

Doubleday is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at McMaster. She obtained her LLB from Osgoode Hall at York University in Toronto, and her PhD in biology from Queen’s University.

Her research interests include peace and health in complex ecological-social-cultural systems, international law and policy, the Arctic region and globalization.

Economist Michel Grignon named director of CHEPA for five-year term

sjohnston — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:01:46 GMT

Michel Grignon, an associate professor in the Departments of Economics and Health, Aging & Society and a CHEPA faculty member since 2004, has been named the centre’s new director.

He will succeed outgoing director Julia Abelson, who has served in the role for the past five years, effective Sept. 1.

Grignon’s research focuses on the financing and funding of health care, determinants of health and health inequalities, and equity in health systems.

As the new director, Grignon plans to ensure that CHEPA continues to flourish as a collegial, multi-disciplinary centre of research, maintains its excellent relationship with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, and enhances its role as a key source of information for health policymakers.

He also wants to lead CHEPA towards becoming a Canadian centre of reference for health economics and policy analysis, by working collaboratively with other Canadian and international institutions that also work in the field.

Diversifying CHEPA’s membership further by including faculty from a wider range of University departments, and ensuring mutual benefits to those departments, the centre and McMaster’s Health Policy PhD program, are also among his goals for the coming years.

Before joining McMaster in 2004, Grignon was a researcher in France, and continues to serve as an adjunct scientist at the Institute for Health Economics in Paris. He is also a member of the Canadian Economics Association.

He has extensive experience at an international level in research projects and activities in the areas of health economics, health-related policies, health insurance and aging. His current research projects cover a broad range of topics, including the relationship between aging and health care in Canada and in France. He is also involved in research examining inequities in health care utilization and health policy in Canada, as well as exploring equity and efficiency by using experimental economic methods for financing health care.

Grignon obtained his Master’s Equivalent at the National School for Statistics and Economics in Paris, and his PhD at École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, also in Paris.

CHEPA doctoral fellow plans to study use, impact of HTA in low-income countries

sjohnston — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:42:54 GMT

A student from Italy who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international development co-operation studies is the recipient of CHEPA’s Doctoral Fellowship for 2011-2012.

Francesca Brundisini, who was born in the United States but has lived most of her life in Italy, will be among seven students joining McMaster’s Health Policy PhD program in September, the fourth cohort for the program since its launch in 2008.

Brundisini earned both her bachelor and master’s degrees in the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Bologna. Her master’s thesis focused on the legal status of internal Chinese migrant workers, specifically the issues and implications they face related to their social, political and legal status. This work sparked her interest in health policy issues, particularly the importance of health care as a basic right among all populations, and the close links and implications between health and the economy.

Brundisini hopes to use her education in development studies to expand her research in the health policy field, with an emphasis on health technology assessment (HTA), and its use and impact in low- and middle-income countries. She plans to explore the value and implications of HTA as it relates to chronic deficiencies in health care systems, and its role in more acute situations, such as humanitarian emergencies.

In addition to her education, Brundisini has expanded her experience in international development through volunteer work with NGOs, including helping children in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and teaching Italian to those from other countries.

In addition to the CHEPA Fellowship, Brundisini has also been granted a School of Graduate Studies International Excellence Award from McMaster University. She will be supervised by CHEPA faculty member Mita Giacomini.

McMaster’s Health Policy PhD program, which is unique in Canada, provides an interdisciplinary curriculum covering theory and empirical methods for framing, investigating and answering crucial questions about health policy. Students receive general training across three fields, and specialize in one of health economics, political studies or social organization.

Visiting scholar with expertise in applied economics available for meetings

sjohnston — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:23:56 GMT

CHEPA is currently host to visiting scholar Emmanouil Mentzakis from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, whose research focuses on applied economics.

Mentzakis is combining his visit to CHEPA with attendance at the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) 8th World Congress in Toronto, July 10-13. He will be joined by several CHEPA faculty at the congress.

Mentzakis is a lecturer in public health economics at the University of East Anglia, and obtained his PhD in health economics at the University of Aberdeen in 2008. He also held a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Economics at McMaster University from 2008 to 2010, under the supervision of CHEPA faculty Jeremiah Hurley. He is now collaborating with Hurley and members of his Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Emerging Team in experimental economic methods.

Mentzakis is interested in both experimental and non-experimental frameworks in applied economics. This includes experimental techniques, their novel applications and methodological aspects of their implementation, as well as examining individual and household behaviours using large, secondary datatsets, with particular focus on the determinants of individual health behaviour and subjective well-being, and the econometric modeling of such functions.

Past topics of research include health externalities, informal/unpaid care, obesity determinants, orphan drugs, subjective well-being and income.

Anyone who would like to meet with Mentzakis during his visit with CHEPA prior to July 10 should contact Lyn Sauberli, ext. 22122, or sauber@mcmaster.ca

CHEPA faculty members who will be participating in the iHEA congress include Stephen Birch, Paul Contoyannis, Phil DeCicca, Michel Grignon, Hurley and Arthur Sweetman. For details on the congress, click here.

Cancer research institute supports research by CHEPA faculty Hsien Seow

sjohnston — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:42:03 GMT

CHEPA faculty member Hsien Seow has received a $670,000 grant to advance his research in the area of end-of-life care for cancer patients.

He is principal investigator on the project that will investigate the organization, delivery and costs of end-of-life care, with a focus on the potential of homecare.

Earlier research by Seow has shown that end-of-life cancer patients in Ontario who received more homecare nursing hours were less likely to require hospital visits. This project will extend this research to three more provinces, investigate the effect of more homecare nursing hours on total health care costs, and determine whether patients use care differently depending on their province.

The three-year study entitled The organization, delivery and costs of end-of-life cancer care: the potential of homecare nursing in four provinces, will begin this summer. The funding is provided by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute.

Seow, who joined CHEPA in 2010, is an assistant professor in McMaster’s Department of Oncology, and holds the Cancer Care Ontario Research Chair in Health Services. His research interests include improving quality and the healthcare service delivery of palliative care for patients with cancer and other serious, chronic illnesses.