Forum co-led program awarded $2 million to support evidence-informed policymaking

The McMaster Health Forum is proud to announce that we will continue co-hosting a program – Harnessing Evidence and Values for Health-System Excellence – that has been newly awarded more than $2 million in funding from Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) through their Health System Research Fund (HSRF) Program Awards. The program brings together the expertise of the McMaster Health Forum and the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA) and will be co-led by John Lavis, the Forum’s director (and a member of CHEPA), and Julia Abelson from CHEPA (and an adjunct faculty member of the Forum).

The program will produce and support the use of research evidence to inform health and social system decisions in identified government priority areas. The program’s primary areas of focus are to:

  1. co-produce and support the use of research evidence about system issues (e.g., rapid syntheses);
  2. elicit patient values to inform system decisions (e.g., citizen panels);
  3. design and evaluate approaches to combining evidence and values with other decision influences (e.g., stakeholder dialogues);
  4. involve knowledge users in all aspects of the work and support their use of what’s learned (i.e., integrated knowledge translation).

The program continues the high-impact work that has been undertaken with support from a previous three-year HSRF Program Award that was co-led by John Lavis and Jeremiah Hurley.

Ontario is investing $27.94 million over three years to improve the health of Ontarians through this wave of Health System Research Fund Program Awards. There were 14 successful program award applicants. Competition results are available on the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care website.