Health Services and Health Policy Research

Health Services and Policy Research: This includes interdisciplinary collaboration to improve medication prescribing and use, understanding the effects of different policy choices or health services on drug prescribing and use and health economics and evidence synthesis including decision analytic techniques for incorporating drug safety and effectiveness data.

HEALTH SERVICES AND HEALTH POLICY RESEARCH

The Mission Statement

The mission of the health services and policy domain is to develop­­­­­ individuals who, upon graduation, have the ability to conduct economic and health technology evaluations in order to solve complex problems in the health system, thereby being able to participate in independent and collaborative research and teaching of health services and policy research for improvement of health in Canada and throughout the world. 

A Description of the Health Services and Policy Domain

The health services and policy domain aims to provide trainees with the skills needed to conduct systematic reviews, economic evaluations, and evaluate current practice in the health care system, to guide evidence based policy decisions on drug prescribing and use. As well, trainees will learn how different policy affects the health care system and individualized patient treatment. Overall, the health services and policy domain provides trainees with the skills to provide leadership as health policy makers and economists and as collaborators in the clinical and health systems and effectively teach health economics and policy.

How Health Services and Policy links to drug safety and effectiveness research and the implications for training in this field…

The health services and policy domain will expose trainees to economic and policy concepts in drug safety and effectiveness research including economic evaluation in health care, and health technology assessments.  This domain addresses the importance of conducting economic and clinical evaluations to support evidence based policy making.  Working on problems with researchers from other domains, we hope that graduates focusing on health services and policy will possess the following skills:

  • a strong foundation in health services and policy concepts/techniques and their application to the decision making process
  • the ability to critically appraise research methodologies, proposals, and manuscripts
  • the ability to develop or contribute to the development of grant proposals as researchers
  • the ability to teach or communicate clinical therapeutics concepts effectively to non-policy makers and economists; and
  • the ability to critically evaluate and conduct economic analysis and health assessments

Online Health Services and Policy resources in the context of drug safety and effectiveness research