Mapping and Tapping the Wellsprings of Health Executive Summary 2002-2007

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Mission

The CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) will support:

  1. research into the complex interactions (biological, social, cultural, environmental), which determine the health of individuals, communities, and global populations; and
  2. the application of that knowledge to improve the health of both populations and individuals, through strategic partnerships with population and public health stakeholders, and innovative research funding programs.

Vision

Canada will be a world leader in inter-disciplinary PPH research and research application, fostering evidence-based policies and programs, and training in the fields of public health, health promotion, and occupational and environmental health. The Institute will also influence, through scientific consultation, the wide range of broader public, voluntary, and private sector activities that profoundly impact on the health of populations.

Strategic Research Priorities

The Institute of Population and Public Health's strategic research priorities build on the Strategic Outlook themes recently published in CIHR's Towards a National Health Research Agenda Document. Each strategic research priority is explained in greater detail in the full strategic plan.

  • Capacity Building
  • Understanding and Addressing the Impacts of Physical and Social Environments on Health
  • Analyzing and Reducing Health Disparities
  • Environmental and Genetic Determinants of Disease in Human Populations
  • Global Health

Capacity Building
Capacity for cutting-edge and relevant PPH research, and for its use by decision-makers, needs to be strengthened, especially in certain regions of the country, by building on Canada's competitive advantages and research niche in PPH. Traditional academic departments are often too isolated from each other, and from PPH policy and program stakeholders, to facilitate integration of the necessary perspectives. Innovative institutional collaborations are required to foster active collaboration between a range of investigators and with PPH research users, and to improve career prospects for the new generation of PPH researchers committed to research and its application. These efforts are essential if the IPPH is to effectively support CIHR's overarching vision of innovative "cross-pillar" research that actually improves the health of Canadians.

Goal
To create, with the Institute's partners (researchers, research funders and users) novel funding vehicles and collaborations to pursue excellence while addressing particular PPH capacity challenges in Canada, including:
  • New Programs, Centres and Networks, to reduce regional disparities in PPH training, research and research application; and,
  • Creative inter-institutional arrangements to sustain the long-term partnerships needed for: inter-disciplinary investigation; effective research transfer; and the ethical use of Canada's rich anonymized and linkable administrative databases to study the health of entire populations.

Understanding and addressing the impacts of physical and social environments on health
As individuals pass through life's stages, their health is affected by a sequence of "macro- and micro- environments" or "contexts' - both physical and social - such as home/family, daycare/school, work/recreation, care-settings (at home and institutional) for the disabled and elderly, "neighbourhood/ community", region and society or national-state levels. Numerous public, private and voluntary sector policies and programs are intended to improve the quality of these environments, but the effects are not always optimal in terms of human health. A major research program, led by the IPPH and appropriate partner organizations, will examine the health impacts of such policies and programs, devise improvements that should benefit population health status, rigorously evaluate the effects of those changes, and synthesize this body of knowledge for ease of use by decision-makers.

Goal
To create a trans-disciplinary national network of researchers, policy-makers, program administrators and public health professionals who can identify and study these important social and physical determinants of health and their interactions, and design and carry out interventions to improve critical "life-course-environments", to achieve population-level health benefits.

Analyzing and Reducing Health Disparities
The health status of virtually all populations varies widely across subgroups, defined by socio-economic status, gender, race/ethnicity, geography (e.g. rural/urban/intra-urban), etc. In Canada, many of these disparities in health status are poorly characterized and documented. Other disparities, while documented, have remained largely unchanged over many years. Comprehensive research programs are needed to describe, investigate and especially reduce such disparities. These programs will need to utilize a trans-disciplinary approach, that acknowledges the many possible origins of health disparities, including differences in the biological, socio-economic, physical, and cultural characteristics of populations and their environments, as affected by local policies and programs that impact on health.

Goal
To develop, together with partner organizations such as the Canadian Population Health Initiative of CIHI, other CIHR Institutes, and the National Institutes of Health, Canada's expertise in assessing and addressing disparities in health status across subpopulations - both nationally and globally.

Environmental and Genetic Determinants of Disease in Human Populations
Virtually all of the major diseases affecting industrialized nations are jointly determined by the interaction of our individual genetic endowments, and the complex sequence of environmental factors - physical, chemical, biological and social - to which we are exposed over the life-course. The new knowledge that is emerging from genomic research must be balanced by equally sophisticated assessments of environmental exposures (which generally change over time, unlike an individual's genome), in order to elucidate the full causal pathways leading to disease and premature death. To accomplish these goals, innovative research strategies will be required, and it may be necessary to conduct complex, large and long-term longitudinal studies that integrate these measurements and accurately link them to precisely ascertained health outcomes. Such research will require close collaboration across scientific disciplines.

Goals
IPPH will work with other CIHR Institutes and other stakeholders to:
  • Facilitate research that elucidates the interactions between an individual's genetic endowment and the complex sequence of environmental exposures - physical, chemical, biological and social - that occur over the life-course and determine health and disease;
  • Promote the application of genomic methodologies and knowledge to studies of biological pathways operative in population health, and in relationship to environmental factors that operate over the life course;
  • Elucidate the biological pathways through which established population health determinants and disparities operate, and whose elucidation may lead to innovative disease prevention and health promotion programs; and,
  • Develop specific Canadian expertise in the genetic, ethical, legal and social (GELS) implications of the new molecular biology, and to explore its policy implications in the context of PPH.

Global Health
Canada's health status is increasingly affected, like that of many countries, by ecological, technological, economic, political and socio-cultural forces acting at a global level. Understanding these "upstream" forces, and their health impacts, in this country and others (especially poorer nations) - is essential to ensuring the future health of Canadians. It is also ethically imperative to work on global issues, if we are to act as responsible global citizens.

Goal
To improve Canada's ability to investigate and intervene on those underlying forces that challenge global health, by enhancing, in a sustainable manner, the capacity of national and international researchers and research-users to collaboratively develop and apply global health knowledge for evidence-based public health practice.

The Institute will focus on "what we can do best with limited resources" (e.g. integrating social/biomedical science perspectives on the origins of global health problems) while collaborating with other CIHR Institutes and funding partners under the Global Health Research Initiative, Health Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), as well as other partners such as, but not limited to, the Canadian Society for International Health (CSIH), the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World Health Organization (WHO), World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) on specific global health challenges.

For further information, please contact:

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH)
Suite 207-L, Banting Building
100 College Street
Toronto, ON M5G 1L5

Tel.: 416-946-7878
Fax: 416-946-7984
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/