Summer Institute 2007
Population Health Intervention Research (PHIR): Creating New Ways Forward
The CIHR Summer Institute Graduating Class On Population Health Intervention Research (Banff, 24th-27th June 2007)
The joint Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) - Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (IHSPR) annual Summer Institute brings together top graduate students, post-doctoral Fellows, researchers and decision makers from across Canada, and from a variety of disciplines, for a unique, four day training opportunity. Designed to provide a complementary learning experience to what students are already receiving through their academic institutions, this year 30 graduate students were accepted from 120 applications from across the country.
Marking the 6th anniversary of the Summer Institute initiative, this year's Summer Institute was hosted from June 24-27 in Banff, Alberta, by the Population Health Intervention Research Centre at the University of Calgary. Dr Penny Hawe heads up the PHIR Centre. Her team designed and hosted the 2007 Summer Institute with support from IPPH and IHSPR, the Canadian Institute for Health Information's Canadian Population Health Initiative and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and with input from faculty at universities across Canada.
This year's Summer Institute topic was Population Health Intervention Research (PHIR): Creating New Ways Forward. Among the types of questions addressed were: How do we get evidence about prevention into the everyday decision making of people who allocate health dollars? And, what type of research is needed to shine the light on broad-based prevention instead of individual-level cure? Over four days, students participated in five types of teaching sessions: PHIR 101 (basic introduction to methods and terms); Issues and case studies in PHIR (including social policy evaluation, natural experiments, consumer involvement, ethics, etc); Cool tools (e.g., tools for knowledge translation); In the Spotlight (where intervention researchers and decision makers were interviewed to shed light to students on pivotal moments and career choices, what makes them tick, and what keeps them going); and group work. Students also had ample networking opportunities, including a chance to meet Ian Potter, Assistant Deputy Minister of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada.
As part of the group work, students were asked to come up with a strategy to increase the quantity of population health intervention research in Canada, its quality, and its use by decision makers. Dr Hawe explained, "This was no hypothetical exercise. Canada is developing a national initiative on this and we want the students' role in it to be front and centre." Indeed, knowledge translation and intervention research - getting research evidence into practice - were central themes at this year's Summer Institute. It appears that this was appreciated by the students: Andrea Smith, a MSc student in Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University, commented, "The highlight of the Institute were the opportunities to engage with leading researchers in the field of population health intervention research. For me, a key lesson was the importance of involving policy makers and other vested parties early on in a research program. Too often, knowledge translation appears merely as an add-on, something to be done after the research is completed. Yet so many more avenues for applying research arise when policy makers are engaged early on in the research process."
Other students echoed Andrea's enthusiasm for and appraisal of the Summer Institute. Enette Pauze, a PhD student in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, remarked, "The Summer Institute was an excellent opportunity for students and mentors sharing an interest in enhancing the capacity and quality of Canadian PHIR to learn from, with and about each other in a truly interdisciplinary environment. The event expanded my understanding of key theories, concepts and tools … and provided the motivation and guidance for moving forward in my own research." Catherine Mah, also a PhD student in the same department, stated, "The CIHR Summer Institute was a remarkable opportunity to connect with fellow scholars and established researchers in a rigorous workshop setting. I found the small group work particularly rewarding. I very much look forward to sustaining and building upon relationships founded at the Institute through future research collaborations. I have returned from the Institute invigorated about my own research and newly optimistic about my plans for an academic research career." And across the country in British Columbia, Shannon Berg, a PhD student in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology at the University of British Columbia reflected, "It will help me both in my doctoral research and in my real job at Vancouver Coastal Health… the concepts I have learned at Summer Institute are so transferable."
For more information, visit PHIRIC, the Population Health Intervention Research Initiative for Canada.