Keenan Research Centre - Research Programs
Centre for Research on Inner City Health - Education
The ACHIEVE Research Partnership: Action for Health Equity Interventions
Approach
We are motivated by the CIHR’s goal to produce the next generation of “creative agents for change,” and by the Institute of Population and Public Health’s call for interventions research, defined as “the use of scientific methods to produce knowledge about policy and program interventions that operate within or outside of the health sector and have the potential to impact health at the population level.”
To marry these two priorities and ensure that interventions research leads to better interventions, ACHIEVE will be explicit in promoting a community of practice and a philosophy of engaged scholarship, which the Big Ten universities has recently endorsed as “the partnership of university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching, and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good.
ACHIEVE will offer an intensive 24 month, collaborative curriculum for new researchers to develop the following competencies that are typically unavailable through traditional graduate training, yet necessary for closing the gap between measuring urban health disparities and reducing them:
- Population Health Interventions Research (PHIR) Often, population health research focuses on measuring the extent of health disparities, rather than generating and testing effective interventions. This program will emphasize the need for interventions research aimed to illuminate solutions to complex problems and facilitate sustainability; and
- Community Engagement Partnerships: ACHIEVE will prepare researchers for careers both within and outside the academy. The program will prioritize experiences to work effectively with, and to be relevant to inner city health service providers, policy-makers, and advocates.
Rationale
The World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health has called global action on health inequities an “ethical imperative.” The need – and potential – for Canada to participate in this effort are great. During the 20th century, Canadians distinguished ourselves as international leaders in both promoting universal access to health care and illuminating the influence of potentially modifiable social, economic, and political factors on individual and population health. Over the last three decades, however, we have fallen behind other nations in mounting innovative, coordinated, and evidence-informed policy and program interventions to reduce health disparities. Across the spectrum of health conditions, lower income and socially marginalized groups in Canada continue to face highest rates of illness and experience greatest unmet need for health care services. Lack of action on the social determinants of health in this country has been attributed to weak models for (1) generating multi-dimensional evidence of ‘what works best’ in Canada and (2) engaging across sectors to meet the complex needs of vulnerable groups.
