Research
Improving Public Health Outcomes for Marginalized Canadians
Our current CIHR funded Public Health Governance project incorporates legal, policy, and social science research to examine the key shortcomings of Canada's public health system, toward the development of a more coherent, holistic, evidence-based and inclusive public health framework, informed by a Planetary One Health approach.
Research activities include:
- Legal and jurisdicational scoping of Canadian public health governance policies, programs, practices, and funding.
- Key informant interviews with Canadian public health experts and actors
- Secondary analysis of qualitative datasets collected with marginalized groups during the COVID-19 pandemic听
- Focus groups with representatives of marginalized gorups, frontline health care workers, and grassroots experts across Canada
- National and international workshops to deliberate on key public health challenges and foresight solutions
All of these activities will culminate in the proposal of a national Population Health and Wellbeing Act: An Act to Care. For more information on this project, visit the Public Health Governance page.
Situating Emerging Science, Medicine, and Technology
Our research brings together diverse theoretical and methodological disciplinary expertise. Research topics have focused on the听relational and material aspects of human and non-human encounters听in the regulation of emerging therapeutic and food products (eg. GMOs), pharmaceuticals, biologics, and vaccines.
Research at TRRU extends far beyond our physical Canadian offices. We regularly conduct multi-sited ethnographic projects on听a听global scale. Wherever our research interests may be, TRRU finds a way to be there too.
Fieldwork sites for our research include:听
- 听 听 听 听Clinical trial sites
- 听 听 听 听Pharmaceutical, biologic and vaccine manufacturers
- 听 听 听 听Agri-biotech laboratories
- 听 听 听 听Expert advisory committees
- 听 听 听 听Regulatory agencies
- 听 听 听 听Health technology assessment agencies
- 听 听 听 听Policy development and implementation settings
- 听 听 听 听Patient activists organizations
- 听 听 听 听Multilateral organizations
- 听 听 听 听Communities affected by products of bioscience
听
Recent Research Goals and Accomplishments
Currently, we are working several CIHR-funded projects, including听Global Vaccine Logics, which seeks to garner a better understanding of the decision-making practices and experiences of all involved in the roll-out of the Ebola vaccine and clinical trials in West Africa.
Completed projects:
- 听 听 听 Articulating Standards
- 听 听 听 Constituting Commercialization听
- 听 听 听 Risks & Regulation
- 听 听 听 Vaccines of the 21st听Century
- 听 听 听 Immunizing Health Care Workers