Health Policy Trials Unit

Learn more about what the Health Policy Trials Unit does

Hands holding phone

What We Do

Located within the Centre for Health Policy at the O’Brien Institute for Public Health, the Health Policy Trials Unit works to ensure health policy decisions are informed by rigorous scientific evidence. Policy trials answer critical questions about which social, economic, and health care interventions improve health and why. Anchored by community and patient partnerships, the unit is situated at the intersection of several research and innovation partners that provide big data access, statistical and machine learning methods, analytical support, trial design expertise, research administration, and knowledge translation.

The Health Policy Trials Unit is closely aligned with Alberta Health Services’ Strategic Clinical Networks and University partners including the Clinical Research Unit, the Centre for Health Informatics, the Interdisciplinary Chronic Disease Collaboration, and the Health Economics Group.

We lead policy trials, provide free consultations to researchers interested in running policy trials in Canada, and collaborate on trials and other rigorous policy evaluations.

  1. Content Strengths

    • Diabetes
    • Kidney Disease
    • Cardiovascular Disease
    • Critical Care
    • Primary Care
    • Specialty care
    • Integrated and coordinated care models
    • Mental Health
    • Substance Use Disorders
    • Homelessness
    • Physician decision making
    • Pharmacoepidemiology
    • Drug coverage policy
  2. Methodological Strengths

    • Randomized trial design
    • Randomized policy trial administration and management
    • Randomized policy trial recruitment
    • Building relationships with research partners
    • Quasi-experimental study design and analysis
    • Administrative health data
    • Electronic health records
    • Policy analysis
    • Policy implementation
    • Implementation science
    • Cost analysis
    • Economic evaluation of trials
    • Data analytics and visualization
    • Propensity score methods
    • Multilevel models

Projects

Recent and ongoing trials conducted by the unit include a large trial of a novel pharmaceutical reimbursement policy to reduce financial barriers (ACCESS Trial); a trial of a healthy food incentive program (FoodRx); and a cluster study examining the impacts of the stepwise rollout of Alberta's province-wide electronic health record.

ACCESS

A large trial of a novel pharmaceutical reimbursement policy to reduce financial barriers. This trial ended March 31, 2021. Analysis is ongoing.

Publications

FoodRx

A healthy food prescription program for adults in Alberta with Type 2 Diabetes and food insecurity. This study is ongoing.

Learn More

Publications