2009-2010 CIHR-IHSPR Article of the Year Award Recipient

Recognizing ground-breaking health services and policy research

The CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (IHSPR) is pleased to announce Dr. Jack Tu as the recipient of the CIHR-IHSPR Article of the Year Award. This award is intended to acknowledge published research that has significantly contributed to the advancement of the field of health services and policy research in Canada.

The CIHR-IHSPR Article of the Year Review Committee selected Dr. Tu's article, "Effectiveness of Public Report Cards for Improving the Quality of Cardiac Care: The EFFECT study: A Randomized Trial," based on its relevance to health services and policy research and the extent to which the article contributed to the advancement of health services and policy research in Canada by showing a clear impact on policy.

In addition to a $10,000 cash prize, Dr. Tu was recognized for his accomplishment at the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research Conference, held in Toronto, May 2010.

About the Winner

Dr. Tu completed his MD degree at the University of Western Ontario in 1988 and his PhD in Health Policy at Harvard University in 1996. He is currently a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto and is the head of the Cardiovascular and Diagnostic Imaging research program at ICES. In addition, he holds a Canada Research Chair in Health Services Research Tier I and was promoted in 2004 to Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is also an attending physician in the Division of Cardiology at the Schulich Heart Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

Dr. Tu is an internationally-recognized health services researcher, who has published over 235 peer-reviewed journal articles, including multiple articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of American Medical Association, and other leading journals. He has held more than $15 million dollars in peer-reviewed grants as a principal investigator from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and other funding agencies. He is the team leader of the Canadian Cardiovascular Outcomes Research Team (CCORT), a group of over 30 of Canada's leading cardiac outcomes researchers, who are conducting a number of innovative projects on Access to Quality Cardiac Care in Canada. CCORT has been funded by a $4.2 million CIHR Team Grant in Cardiovascular Outcomes Research.

Dr. Tu's and colleagues' paper entitled "Effectiveness of Public Report Cards for Improving the Quality of Cardiac Care: The EFFECT study: A Randomized Trial" was the first randomized clinical trial, ever conducted to evaluate whether public report cards could improve quality of care. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Tu and his team randomized 86 participating Ontario hospitals to early or delayed publication of their performance on a set of 12 national heart attack and 6 heart failure quality indicators. While the results showed that public report cards did not improve all aspects of cardiac care, there were significant reductions in mortality rates among patients at hospitals exposed earlier to public reporting. The methods and results from the EFFECT study have been used by many hospitals in Ontario and other jurisdictions to improve the quality of care they provide. As a result of his pioneering work on the EFFECT study and other report card initiatives, Dr. Tu has been invited to work with many other organizations in Canada interested in improving the quality of cardiac care including Safer Health Care Now, Cardiac Care Network of Ontario, Canadian Cardiovascular Society, and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care.

Dr. Tu supervises students at all levels of training from medical students to postdoctoral fellows, and been invited to present lectures at medical research meetings in Canada, the United States, Asia, and Europe. His academic honors include the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine Young Investigator Award, a Harkness Associate Award from the Commonwealth Fund, New York, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research National Knowledge Translation Award. He has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Inquiries pertaining to the IHSPR Article of the Year Award can be addressed to Stephanie Soo at stephanie.soo@utoronto.ca.