Expert Advisory Body on the Economic Cost of Illness in Canada: About

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Background

Economic Cost of Illness in Canada program

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is modernizing and updating the Economic Cost of Illness in Canada (ECIC) program. The aim of the ECIC program is to supply objective and comparable information on the magnitude of cost of illness. This ongoing program will produce a one-of-a-kind study with detailed cost breakdowns of major illnesses providing a national picture using a consistent methodology.

The ECIC covers both direct and indirect costs. Examples of direct costs include hospital care, physician care, and prescription drugs costs. Examples of indirect costs include lost production due to morbidity and premature mortality, and informal caregiving costs.

Expert Advisory Body on the Economic Cost of Illness in Canada

The Expert Advisory Body on the Economic Cost of Illness in Canada provides advice and recommendations to PHAC related to the ECIC and ensures timely discussions on data and methodological considerations to support the modernization of the ECIC. This is a multidisciplinary group of experts in the fields of:

Members

Dr. Claire de Oliveira, Chair

University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario

Dr. Claire de Oliveira is an associate professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, a senior scientist/senior health economist at the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, a senior adjunct scientist in the Mental Health and Addictions Program at ICES, and an honorary senior lecturer at the Hull York Medical School, University of York. In addition to her academic appointments, Dr. de Oliveira currently serves as a board member, treasurer, and member of the executive committee of the International Health Economics Association and a member of the international editorial board of the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Dr. de Oliveira has published in the mental health economics and mental health services research fields, with several notable publications in high-impact journals, such as the Lancet Psychiatry, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and Health Affairs. She has experience working with administrative health care and survey data and has expertise in data and regression analysis and economic analyses.

She holds a Licenciatura in economics from the University of Oporto in Portugal and MA and PhD degrees in economics from McMaster University in Canada.

Dr. de Oliveira's main areas of research are in health economics and health services research applied to mental health and child health. Her program of research focuses on the relationship between mental health and work-related outcomes (e.g., lost productivity, employment), health care utilisation and costs of care among individuals with schizophrenia and those with eating disorders, and parental and child/youth mental health and wellbeing and their impact on later life outcomes. In addition, she has led research around the estimation of the economic burden of cancer care in Canada.

Dr. Paul Grootendorst

University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario

Paul Grootendorst is an academic economist and an Associate professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto. His research interests are in the economic aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, including drug development; pharmaceuticals use, insurance and reimbursement; and interactions between innovative (brand) and generic drug firms. He is also interested in methods for program evaluation using observational data. He is adjunct associate professor in the Department of Economics, McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, associate editor of Health Economics and past president, Canadian Health Economics Association.

Pierre Léveillé

Canadian Institute for Health Information
Quispamsis, New Brunswick

Completed his undergraduate studies at the Université de Sherbrooke and Lakehead University. Started his health care career as a Medical Laboratory Technology in medical laboratories in Ontario, and New Brunswick. Received his Advanced Registered Technologist in Hematology from the Canadian Society of Medical Laboratory Science in 1993. Moved to the Ministry of Health where he acted as a Laboratory Consultant, Provincial MIS Coordinator and project manager for the development of a Population Based Patient Care Funding Distribution Formula. In 2005, he joined the Canadian Institute for Health Information as a MIS Standards (Standards for Management Information Systems in Canadian Health Service Organizations) Consultant. Since then he has been acting manager of the MIS and Costing department, stakeholder engagement lead for the Financial Standards and Information department and is currently the team lead for data modernization and advancement.

Dr. Deborah Marshall

University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta

Dr. Marshall is a Professor and the Svare Chair for Value and Impact in Child Health Research at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She is currently a Scientific Director at the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI) and the Lead for Impact, Value and Knowledge Mobilization for the One Child Every Child (OCEC) Canada First Research Excellence Fund programme.

She is a health economist leading a programme of applied health service research and policy using patient preferences and simulation modelling methods to assess value and impact. Dr Marshall leads the health economics, socioeconomic benefits, patient preferences research for several national and international research programmes (funded by Canadian Institute of Health Research/Genome Canada) in precision health and patient-oriented research, particularly in child health (ucancandu.com) and rare disease (care4rare.ca).

Deborah is a founding co-investigator of the innovative Patient and Community Engagement Research (PaCER) programme at the University of Calgary which trains patients to design and conduct health research, using specific adapted methods of qualitative inquiry.

A former President and member of the Board of Directors, she remains an active member of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) serving as the co-chair and member on various Patient Preferences and Simulation Modeling international expert Task Forces and serves as a member of the Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) Patient Preferences Working Group. She is also the inaugural Deputy Editor for Health Affairs Scholar, a global health policy open access journal under the aegis of Health Affairs.

As the Nominated Principal Applicant of the Canadian Institute of Health Research Health Systems Impact Fellowship (HSIF) National Cohort Training Program "Enhancing a Community of Practice for the Health System Impact Fellowship Program: Advancing Capacity for Sustainable & Patient-Centered Learning Health Systems across Canada", she supports HSIF embedded research fellows across Canada.

Dr. Kimberlyn McGrail

University of British Columbia (UBC) / Health Data Research Network Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia

Kimberlyn McGrail is a Professor in the UBC School of Population and Public Health and Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, Scientific Director of Population Data BC and CEO of Health Data Research Network Canada. Her research interests are quantitative policy evaluation and all aspects of population data science. She conducts research in collaboration with patients and the public, as well as with policy and decision makers. Kim is Interim Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Population Data Science. She was the 2009/10 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Associate in Health Care Policy and Practice, 2016 recipient of the Cortlandt JG Mackenzie Prize for Excellence in Teaching, 2017 recipient of a UBC award for Excellence in Clinical or Applied Research. In 2019-2020, she participated as a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Task Force on AI4Health and from 2020-2022 was a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy. She is currently a member of the Global Partnership for AI (Artificial Intelligence) Data Governance Working Group, which includes members from more than 20 countries, and a member of a number of Canadian advisory groups related to health data and research. She holds a PhD in Health Care and Epidemiology from the University of British Columbia, and a Master's in Public Health from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Beate Sander

University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario

Dr. Beate Sander, RN MBA MecDev PhD, holds a Canada Research Chair in Economics of Infectious Diseases, is a Senior Scientist at the Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment (THETA) collaborative at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, University Health Network (UHN), and Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), University of Toronto. She holds appointments as Adjunct Senior Scientist at ICES (formerly known as Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences), and Adjunct Scientist Public Health Ontario (PHO).

Dr. Sander is an internationally recognized leader in infectious disease economics with extensive expertise in health economics and simulation modeling. She is the principal investigator of several multidisciplinary projects funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and other organizations. Her research foci are on assessing infectious disease interventions using simulation modeling and on estimating the burden of infectious diseases using population-based data. Dr. Sander has received several awards for research excellence.

Dr. Sander is an expert to national and international advisory bodies, including Canada's National Advisory Committee for Immunization (NACI), where she co-chaired the Economic Guidelines Task Group – a group tasked with developing national guidelines for the economic evaluation of vaccines, which sets the standard for conducting economic evaluations for vaccines in Canada. Dr. Sander co-chaired the Ontario COVID-19 Modeling Consensus Table from March 2020 to March 2022 and was a member of Ontario's Science Advisory Table, leading timely COVID-19 evidence generation and knowledge mobilization. Dr. Sander is a member of several Federal expert advisory committees and Past President of the international Society for Medical Decision Making.

Dr. Erin Strumpf

McGill University
Montreal, Quebec

Erin Strumpf, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Economics and the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University and a founding member of McGill's Public Policy and Population Health Observatory (3PO). She is affiliated with McGill's Department of Equity, Ethics, and Policy, Family Medicine Department, and Department of Oncology, as well as the Centre on Population Dynamics. From 2019-2022, she was an affiliated researcher with the cancer unit at l'Institut national d'excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS). Prof. Strumpf holds a PhD in Health Policy and Economics from Harvard University, and a BA from Smith College. She is a William Dawson Scholar at McGill University and previously held Chercheur-boursiers (Junior 1 and 2) from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé.

Dr. Walter Wodchis

University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario

Walter Wodchis, PhD, is Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, Research Chair in Implementation and Evaluation Science and Senior Scientist at the Institute for Better Health (IBH), Trillium Health Partners, and Senior Adjunct Scientist at ICES. He is also co-lead for the International Foundation for Integrated care (IFIC) Canada. An internationally recognized scientist in health economics, financing, health care policy evaluation and integrated care, Walter is leading research to understand and improve health system integration and performance. Through his research programs which include more than 30 collaborating researchers and as many trainees, Dr. Wodchis has developed research to understand the needs and care trajectories for individuals with high care costs and complex health needs, particularly those with multiple chronic conditions. He has led multiple local, national and international research programs to understand the implementation of integrated care programs to address those needs. At IBH, Wodchis is working to advance a Learning Health System. As principal investigator for the Health System Performance Network, Walter also leads a team of scientists and trainees responsible for provincial evaluations of integrated care programs in Ontario. Past significant publications include quality of life measurement for older populations, incentives and government payment for physicians and long-term care including pay for performance, and the relationship between quality and cost. He holds a Bachelor of Mathematics (Waterloo), Master's in both Gerontology (Waterloo) and Economics (Michigan) and earned his doctorate in Health Services Organization and Policy (Health Economics) at the University of Michigan.

Contact us

To contact the Expert Advisory Body Secretariat Team at the Public Health Agency of Canada, please email: ecic-cemc@phac-aspc.gc.ca.

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