CIHR Catalyst Grant : CPHO’s Report 2021: Future of Public Health

Every year, the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada (CPHO) is mandated to provide the Minister of Health with an independent report on the health of Canadians. These reports seek to raise the profile of public health issues, stimulate dialogue, and inform action to improve and protect the health of Canadians.

This year, the annual CPHO report offers a collective vision of a renewed and strengthened public health system. The report includes priorities for transformational change to the public health system, rooted in equity and based on the best available evidence and input from the broader public health community.

This funding opportunity will support research on the population and public health priorities identified in the 2021 CPHO Annual Report, with a portion of the funding reserved for Early Career Researchers (ECRs). It builds on previous Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) funding focused on building an evidence base to inform the organization and delivery of public health services. Most recently, in 2019, IPPH and the Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (IHSPR) launched a funding opportunity to support research on the positive, negative and/or unintended impacts of recent and ongoing changes to the financing, governance, and delivery of public health services and responsibilities in Canada. The funding opportunity also aligns with the mission of the CIHR Centre for Research on Pandemic Preparedness and Health Emergencies (CRPPHE) to protect the health of all Canadians by developing and mobilizing research for pandemic and health emergency preparedness, prevention, response, and recovery that contributes meaningfully to timely, equitable and effective responses and recovery.

Research Areas

This funding opportunity will support projects relevant to the following research areas:

• General Pool: Funding will support population and public health research on research priorities identified by the 2021 CPHO annual report and listed in the Generating Knowledge to Inform Public Health Systems Transformation document. This includes priorities listed in the ‘Research priority areas for public health system transformation’ and ‘Indigenous public health research priorities’ sections of the document.
• Centre for Research on Pandemic Preparedness and Health Emergencies: In addition to meeting the requirements of the General Pool above, to be relevant to the CRPPHE pool applications
  • must align with the CRPPHE mission and must address one of the following CPHO research priorities:
    • Evaluate effectiveness and efficiency of digital health initiatives implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to identify lessons learned and opportunities for equitable and inclusive scaling.
    • Identify or evaluate tools and approaches to measure and improve public health system pandemic or health emergency readiness and effectiveness, including coordination with global partners.
    • Leverage foresight tools (e.g., predictive modeling and artificial intelligence) from an equity lens to improve public health emergency preparedness.
    • Develop and/or test equity indicators (similar to the Marmot Indicators) that can be used to guide cross-sectoral priority actions to protect populations from health emergencies
    • Develop and evaluate policy and program interventions to build trust in public health and decrease the impacts of mis- and disinformation.
    • Measure infectious diseases and their impacts in First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities (special focus on COVID-19), including the long-term and indirect impacts of COVID-19, and propose solutions.

Generating evidence on real-world interventions in real-time involves a myriad of disciplinary perspectives and can benefit from a range of research designs, theories and methodological approaches. Interdisciplinary studies, Indigenous methodologies and studies that apply novel approaches emanating from different disciplinary traditions are welcome.

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