Research, education, and service to solve grand health challenges
Teaching and research in the School of Public Health Sciences focuses on the development of capacity, tools, processes and structures (e.g., governance, policy, mass communication, community mobilization, surveillance, and evaluation) to reorganize, integrate and shape the complex systems and organizations which facilitate or undermine population health and the integrated, efficient delivery of health care.
In addition to classical public health methodologies (e.g., epidemiology, determinants of health), every student will have foundational knowledge about how health systems are organized, as well as how and why it is important to understand health (and health care) as a system.
Our researchers work closely with partners including ministries of health and health promotion, the World Health Organization, Public Health Agency of Canada, private industry, and many others to identify and understand health complex challenges and to develop relevant solutions.
Focus areas
Our research, education and training aims to solve significant local, provincial/state, national and international challenges in various areas of public health and health systems.
- Chronic disease prevention and management - helping to analyse and improve national and international health policies and regulations of chronic disease through understanding and altering social, economic, political, and cultural determinants
- Food and water safety, security, and governance - examining the global health impact of food and water safety and security through epidemiology of food and water borne disease, nutrition management, and medical geography
- Global health - examining how globalizing processes impact economic development, health, healthcare and education
- Health and aging - taking an integrative approach to the biological, psychological, social, and environmental determinants of health and wellness focused on the life-course trajectory of aging in individuals
- Health and environment - investigating the impacts of the built environment, environmental degradation, urbanization, globalisation on population health
- Health informatics - developing and utilizing health sciences and information technologies to support and improve the status of individual and community health
- Health neuroscience and cognitive epidemiology - examining reciprocal relationships between lifestyle, lifespan development, and sociodemographic factors and brain health on the level of whole populations
- Health policy and health systems - investigating and evaluating health care systems and improving their integration and efficiency through the design of diagnostics, treatment, and analytic and assessment tools
- Healthy workplaces - examining occupational health and safety risks and designing interventions to improve health and wellness in the workplace and develop more effective safety management systems