What is the Center for Health Policy?

Development of a Centre for Health Policy has been under consideration since 2016. As we emerge from the COVID19 pandemic it is clear that there is an urgent need for a national hub to bring people together from across organizations to develop policy options to advance public health. The Centre for Health Policy will provide a keystone opportunity to achieve the aims of Growth through Focus by proving that great societies are anchored by great research universities.

The mission of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health is to advance public health through research excellence. Our role is to support academic scholars to tackle public health challenges, bringing them together with health practitioners, citizens, governments, businesses, and non-governmental organizations when collective actions is required. To that end, the formal launch and subsequent evolution of a Centre for Health Policy within the O’Brien Institute for Public Health will serve three main aims:

1. Providing thought leadership by bringing together geographically distributed transdisciplinary experts into a virtual health policy centre to advance evidence informed considerations of health in all policies.
2. Strengthening our focus on our community by seeking out deeper and more meaningful partnerships within our community (businesses, government, and non-governmental organizations) and brokering partnerships between our members and relevant stakeholder groups.
3. Increasing the visibility and reach of expertise on matters of health policy by working to scale and promote our members scientific and social innovations.

The Centre will operate using a partnership model where community organizations and university researchers bring health policy challenges and solutions to the Centre. We broker partnerships between those with public health challenges and those working on solutions. We bring together all the key players - citizens, community groups, researchers, government officials and health system leaders to ensure we have both the necessary expertise at the table and a 360 degree view of the challenge. The partners then works through the challenge, drawing on local, national and international experience and expertise to develop options and a clear understanding of their strengths and trade-offs. Using our network of collaborators and expertise in knowledge exchange we connected back out to society, linking with policy makers, monitoring the implementation of proposed actions and suggesting refinements as we see how they work.