Message from the IPPH Scientific Director: Global Symposium on Health Systems Research

Dear colleagues,

As many of you will know, Canada is hosting the Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research from November 14-18, 2016 in Vancouver, BC.

This is a major international event that takes place every two years. It brings together thousands of health system leaders, researchers and trainees to discuss how we make health systems better through research. The focus of this year’s symposium is on creating resilient and responsive health systems for a changing world.

The CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health has provided financial support for the event, along with several other CIHR Institutes, and we have helped organize a number of panel sessions. If you will be in Vancouver, I hope you will join me and the several other CIHR Scientific Directors who are taking part in these sessions.

I’d also like to recognize the researchers and trainees who successfully competed for CIHR travel awards to attend this symposium through an open, peer-reviewed competition co-funded by my Institute and the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research that Robyn Tamblyn leads. Together, we were able to fund 18 awards. For example, the five top-ranked applicants by peer reviewers were:

• Dr. Benjamin Brisbois, a postdoctoral researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital
• Mr. Jean Claude Mutabazi, a PhD student at Université de Montreal
• Dr. Emilie Robert, a postdoctoral researcher at Université de Montreal
• Dr. Sheona Mitchell, an obstetrician and gynecologist and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia
• Dr. Lisa Puchalski Ritchie, an emergency physician with the University Health Network, a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital

These kinds of travel awards are regularly offered by CIHR Institutes to attend particular events of strategic importance to each Institute’s respective mandate. IPPH’s next such competition will be to support researchers to present at the Canadian Public Health Association’s Annual Conference from June 6-8, 2017 in Halifax, NS. The CPHA Conference deadline for submitting workshop proposals is November 22, 2016, and the deadline for submitting abstracts is November 29, 2016. See their website for more details. IPPH’s open competition for travel awards to present accepted abstracts/workshops at this conference will open in December.

My congratulations again to those who received travel awards to attend the forthcoming health systems research symposium. I look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!

Best,
Steven

Steven J. Hoffman JD PhD LLD
Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health
Director, Global Strategy Lab, and
Associate Professor of Law, University of Ottawa

NT5