Dr. Helen Chen Brings Predictive Public Health to CIPHI 2026

Dr. Helen Chen, of the School of Public Health Sciences, is presenting at the 84th CIPHI Ontario Branch Annual Educational Conference, held October 14–16, 2026 at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her session, co-presented with Phil Wong from Toronto Public Health (TPH), is titled “Harmonizing Food Inspection Data to Support Predictive Public Health Practice” and runs from 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM.

The talk speaks directly to this year’s conference theme, The Evolving Role of Environmental Public Health, and its “Adapting the Toolkit” stream, which focuses on modernizing public health practice through new tools and technologies. The public health inspectors, decision-makers, and researchers from across Ontario sit at the front line of the food safety system that Waterloo's team aims to strengthen.

Food inspection generates a wealth of data, but it is often collected across many health units in differing systems, formats, and standards. That fragmentation makes it difficult to combine records into a consistent, analysis-ready resource. Dr. Chen and Mr. Wong’s presentation addresses how harmonizing this data can lay the groundwork for predictive public health practice — approaches that help inspectors and agencies anticipate risk, prioritize inspections, and direct limited resources to where they are needed most.

The work is part of the endeavour of the food inspection team, lead by Ziting and Nauman. The project aims to turn historical inspection records into trustworthy, privacy-respecting infrastructure that supports better decisions and better outcomes. By showing how routine inspection records can be standardized, the session connects data science directly to the day-to-day work of protecting community health, leading to future agentic systems design.