Looking back and moving forward
Looking back and moving forward: Supporting health after 2020
July 14, 2021
Great moments in history often spur equally great changes in society. We will likely look back on 2020 as one of these great moments. The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on a number of existing societal issues, accelerated the pace of change in others, and created some new ones, too. For example, concerns about the quality and safety of long-term care services are not new, but they certainly became more apparent to a far larger number of people during 2020. The speed and starkness of changes such as this—but far beyond this as well—create an opportunity and motivation to reassess our understanding of health. Perhaps more importantly, it is an opportunity to reduce inequities in who has access to and who uses and benefits from the resources that promote health and wellbeing. The Health After 2020 series is UBC Health’s contribution to making sure we seize this opportunity.
About the Speakers
Kim McGrail is Director of Research for UBC Health; Professor in the School of Population and Public Health and the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at UBC; and Scientific Director of Population Data BC and the SPOR Canadian Data Platform.
Her research interests are quantitative policy evaluation, aging and the use and cost of health services, and the ethical and technical aspects of the development and operation of large linked data systems. Her research is conducted in collaboration with policy and decision makers, clinicians, and the public.
Kim is a founding member of the International Population Data Linkage Network and founding Deputy Editor of the International Journal of Population Data Science. She was the 2009-10 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Associate in Health Care Policy and Practice, a 2016 recipient of the Cortlandt JG Mackenzie Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and 2017 recipient of a UBC award for Excellence in Clinical or Applied Research. She holds a PhD in Health Care and Epidemiology from UBC, and a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Michigan.
As Director of Research for UBC Health, Dr. McGrail works to initiate and support collaborations among academic and clinical faculty and other stakeholders on relevant translational health research issues, and in partnership with UBC academic leaders and stakeholders, engage them in aligning the use of health data in translational research and in the application of knowledge to health systems.
Jeffrey Morgan is a Vanier Scholar and PhD student in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. He is affiliated with the BC Centre on Substance Use, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, and Community-Based Research Centre. His research uses community-based and participatory approaches that meaningfully involve community members and patient partners at every step of the research process, particularly on projects that advance health equity for people who use substances and sexual minority people. Jeffrey’s PhD research seeks to validate and utilize health administrative data in the context of substance use in order to better understand our system of addiction care.
Arjumand Siddiqi is a social epidemiologist and Professor and Division Head of Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Population Health Equity. She also holds cross appointments in Public Policy and Sociology at the University of Toronto, as well as an adjunct appointment at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
Her research centres on understanding why health inequalities are so pervasive and persistent, and what can be done about this, with an emphasis on the role of societal conditions (policy, politics, economy, and so on). In recent years, she has focused on (a) evaluating of the impact of specific social policies on population health and health inequalities, (b) examining the causes of contemporary trends in population health and health inequalities (e.g., the recent, unusual decline in life expectancy in the liberal welfare states; the widening of racial and socioeconomic health inequalities in many societies; the social distribution of the COVID-19 pandemic), and (c) reflections on concepts and methods used in health inequalities research.
Arjumand also engages with governmental and non-governmental entities, including the Government of Ontario, the Government of Canada, and the World Health Organization.
Michael Stepner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. His research examines the relationship between health and economic inequality, with a focus on how public policy can improve the health and financial security of low-income populations. He also serves as the network leader for Health Trends and Inequalities research at the NBER Center for Aging and Health Research, and as a guest editor for the COVID-19 special issue for the Canadian Public Policy journal. Michael received his PhD from MIT in 2019, and his dissertation research was awarded the top dissertation award from the National Academy of Social Insurance.