Other Notables

"Encyclopedia Brown" Featured in the Canadian Healthcare Manager

Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, Assistant Professor in HPME, was featured in the People section of the September 2003 issue of the Canadian Healthcare Manager for his leadership role on the Ontario Hospital Report Project. Comparing his experience as a consultant in the US healthcare system with Ontario's report, Dr. Brown says "It became pretty clear to me that there were a lot of things going on here…that were way ahead of what I was trying to do south of the border." He attributes this to the high level of involvement and cooperation of Canadian hospitals and professionals working in the healthcare system: "We've got hundreds of people on these panels, we've got hospitals signing up voluntarily. I don't know if that would have been possible in the States…I guess it's kind of a nice Canadian success story and representative of how our system works."

The Hospital Report Project develops balanced scorecards for inpatient hospital care, emergency department care, and chronic care. It also includes special reports describing methods for performance measurement in rehabilitation, mental health, population health, women's health, and nursing. Dr. Brown is the principle investigator of the project which includes more than 35 researchers at three universities and six institutes.

First Workshop of the Canadian Priority Setting Research Network

Dr. Doug Martin, HPME Assistant Professor and Director of the Collaborative Program in Bioethics, led the first workshop of the Canadian Priority Setting Research Network (CPSRN) at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics on August 25, 2003. Scholars and decision makers from Norway, England, Uganda, the United States and Canada met to discuss issues facing the field of priority setting - in particular, how to evaluate improvements to priority setting. Participants included leading priority setting scholars Norman Daniels, Chris Ham, Ole Frithjof Norheim, and the CEO of UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence, Andrew Dillon.

Funded by an Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement Grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the CPSRN is involved in the following projects:

• Evaluating Interventions to Improve Priority Setting
• Developing a Global Priority Setting Research Network
• Public Beliefs about Priority Setting Criteria
• Exploring the Role of District Health Authorities and Community Health Boards: Attending to the Health Needs of African Nova Scotians
• Priority Setting in Response to SARS
• Priority Setting in Hospitals: a system wide-study
• Priority Setting and Health System Reform

Official Launch of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research

Dr. David Zakus, Associate Professor in HPME and Director of the Centre for International Health is pleased to announce the official launch of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research (CCGHR), on October 28, 2003. Dr. Zakus is a member of the Interim Board of Directors and Chair of the Training Committee of CCGHR. For more information, download the first issue of Global Connections (Acrobat PDF), CCGHR's newsletter. For more information on global health research funding, see the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) strategic initiatives, Global Health Research Initiative.

Centre for International Health Launches HIV/AIDS Initiative for Africa

The Centre for International Health (CIH) launched its HIV/AIDS Initiative for Africa on October 24, 2003 at the Rotman School of Management. James Orbinski provided the key note address and members of the CIH HIV/AIDS Steering Committee provided presentations, co-chaired by Dr. David Zakus of HPME and Owens Wiwa.

For information on the latest events and happenings at the Centre for International Health, please consider joining the CIH Listserv.

Ben Chan Takes on New Role as CEO of Saskatchewan's Health Quality Council

Dr. Ben Chan, Assistant Professor in HPME and Senior Scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), began his new position as CEO of the Health Quality Council on October 1, 2003. The Health Quality Council is a new, independent agency that will report on and recommend innovative ways to improve quality within Saskatchewan's health system. Led by an appointed panel of provincial, national, and international health leaders, the HQC will provide advice to government, regional health authorities, and health care professionals on a wide range of issues related to health system quality and performance.

The PEDE Project - A Website Devoted to Paediatric Health Economic Research

The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute is pleased to announce the launch of a new website dedicated to paediatric health economic evaluation.

The Paediatric Economic Database Evaluation (PEDE) project featured on the website is part of a unique research program in paediatric health economic methods developed by Dr. Wendy Ungar, Assistant Professor in HPME and Scientist in Population Health Sciences, Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute. The PEDE project recognizes that there are unique challenges in applying standard health economic methods to children.

The first of its kind, PEDE features a database containing detailed information for over 1,000 published paediatric economic evaluations. Publications of economic evaluations of treatments and services for children have grown 10-fold since 1980, reflecting an increasing interest in understanding how the costs of treatment are weighed against the health benefits. Understanding the cost-effectiveness of treatments and services for children is essential for ensuring that the resources available in our economically constrained health-care system are allocated in the most efficient manner.

The PEDE database is freely accessible on the Internet with a user-friendly search engine. The full output includes detailed information about study characteristics for each publication. This database is a valuable tool for clinicians interested in a particular condition or treatment, for scientists wishing to examine paediatric health services, and for health economists and policy decision-makers desiring to learn more about the economic benefits of particular treatments and services.

Research studies related to various phases of the PEDE project are published in the current issues of Medical Care and Value in Health and a forthcoming edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood. A full technical report is available online.

The Web site can be found at: http://pede.bioinfo.sickkids.on.ca/pede.

Support for this research program comes from The Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment and The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute and from in-kind support from the Institute of Health Economics. Dr. Wendy J. Ungar is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Career Award.

National Health Law Conference 2004

The Health Law & Policy Group at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, will be hosting a national conference on health law and policy issues on January 23-24, 2004. The conference theme is "Who Gets It? Who Decides? Issues of Access and Allocation in Health Care". Registrations are now being accepted and registration forms can be downloaded from the conference website.

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