SPPH Assistant Professor Jason Sutherland is happy to announce that the operating grant for his SILOS (Aligning Structures and Incentives in Loosely Organized Systems) study will be funded by CIHR.

The methods used for funding health care in Canada remain largely unchanged over the past 30 years, allocated predominately through global budgets with some adjustments for population growth and changes in case mix. Global budgets create financial incentives promoting cost minimization within each health care delivery setting, with no single provider or setting bearing ultimate accountability for population outcomes or costs. This 'silo-ed' approach to health care funding perpetuates fragmented care and lack of care coordination between settings, and it is associated with poorer outcomes and higher costs.

However, some provinces are beginning to change the way they approach health care funding. Changes to financial incentives are now being actively considered as a means to achieve a broader range of policy objectives, such as increasing efficiency of health care delivery, decreasing wait times and promoting quality of care. For example, activity-based funding (ABF) programs are being implemented in several provinces to improve access to hospital care and pay-for-performance (P4P) programs are being used to decrease wait times in emergency departments. While the effectiveness of these policies to achieve their objectives is still being measured in Canada, the evidence suggests that these incentives fail to coordinate care and encourage shared efficiencies across settings; in short, these incentives fail to overcome the silo-based approach to health care funding.

This proposed study targets the development of methods for funding health care services across settings and providers related to a specific episode of care, commonly referred to as "bundled payment" methods. Bundled payments have two primary aims. The first is to improve the coordination and quality of care by prospectively identifying all settings and providers involved in the delivery of a specific episode of care. The second is to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of care by linking settings and providers with a single funding amount, thus using financial incentives to change behaviours.

Aligning financial incentives for improving system integration has the potential to improve the value of Canadian health care spending, noting that it is very important that policy advances in this area are preceded by the development of sound methods.

With the assistance of UBC Building Operations, SPPH is again offering no charge eWaste recycling. These items are eligible for recycling:

• desktop, laptop and tablet computers
• mobile/smart phones and PDAs
• computer peripherals (mice, keyboards, cables)
• monitors and televisions (LCD and CRT)
• printers and fax machines

Some items in working condition may be routed to a technology initiative for families and schools in Liberia. If you have questions about this initiative, please contact Veronica Fynn (fynn@exchange.ubc.ca).

Privacy Considerations
For those wishing to dispose of hardware with functioning storage systems (e.g., hard drives), please consider what data may remain. If you are concerned that your storage device may contain sensitive data, please consider using a product such as http://www.dban.org, http://eraser.heidi.ie or Apple Disk Utility (for OS X) to wipe the contents from your device. If in doubt, do not send the storage device for recycling. Instead, mark it as requiring sanitization and see Michael Berdan (michael.berdan@ubc.ca or Rm. 133A) for assistance. He will not wipe your storage device for you, but can recommend some next steps.

Where and When
Please place items outside Room 379 in the SPPH Building, against the wall, without blocking the hallway. 

eWaste will be accepted until April 15th.

Senior faculty members from the School of Population and Public Health met with representatives from the School of Public Health and Primary Care (SPHPC) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to discuss potential collaborations, mainly on research projects and student exchanges.

Left to right: Sui Hen, Department of Family Practice (UBC); Dr. Charles Larson, Theme Lead, Global and Indigenous Health, SPPH and Clinical Professor, Department of Pediatrics (UBC) ; Prof. Carmen Wong, Assistant Professor School of Public Health and Primary Care (CUHK); Dr. David Patrick, Professor and Director of School of Population and Public Health (UBC); Dr. Carolyn Gotay, Professor, SPPH, Canadian Cancer Society Chair in Cancer Primary Prevention (UBC); Dr. Patricia Janssen, Professor, SPPH, Co-Lead, Maternal-Child Health Theme, Director, MPH Program (UBC); Hay Lam Hale Ho, Programme Development Officer, The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care (CUHK); Lam, Yan Bonnie Fok, Programme Executive, The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care (CUHK); Po Lam Teresa Lee, Deputy Administrator, The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care (CUHK); Dr. Lydia Ma, Director, Continuing Education and Outreach, SPPH (UBC).

The School of Public Health and Primary Care (SPHPC) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong is a comprehensive school of public health research and teaching that strives to maintain a world-class standard of excellence in training public health professionals. SPHPC aims to advance the health of populations regionally and internationally, working in cross-cutting collaboration with partners from a diverse range of disciplines and institutions.

Throughout the years, SPHPC has made numerous collaborations with universities in Asia, with a particularly strong network with universities in Mainland China. As one of the leading institutes in Hong Kong, SPHPC of CUHK has established friendships with oversea institutes, including the Oxford University, the Cardiff University, University of Leeds, University of London, and Teikyo University. Situated in Hong Kong, it has solid relationships with South-East Asia Public Health Education Institutes Network (SEA PHEIN) and believe that they can serve as a bridge for the university networks in the West.

Dr. Carolyn Gotay was interviewed by CTV BC on March 7th as part of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation’s “Ask an Expert Series”, which continues until March 9th.

Dr. Gotay answered questions submitted by the public through the CTV website on a number of breast cancer prevention topics: breast feeding benefits, tanning bed safety, the role of stress in cancer, and the effects of soy consumption on breast cancer.

To watch video, click here

Dr. Jane Buxton, Associate Professor at the School of Population of Public Health, has been appointed chair of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada's Specialty Committee in Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

Congratulations, Jane

The 3MT UBC semi-finals took place on February 29th, and three SPPH students were selected to compete: Stephen Pan, Jason Tan de Bibiana and Alden Blair. All three gave stellar performances:

• Congratulations to Alden Blair - awarded the People's Choice award.
• Congratulations to Jason Tan de Bibiana - awarded runner-up in the UBC semi-final and now progressing to the UBC final.

Next was the UBC-wide final on Friday March 2, where Jason Tan de Bibiana was voted the People's Choice!

Congratulations, Jason.

The Finalists

The Winners

People's Choice - Jason Tan de Bibiana

Each year at the UBC's Celebrate Research Week delivers on the promise of its name with dozens of fascinating and informative events open to the UBC community and the general public.

One of the most prestigious event of Celebrate Research Week is the annual Wyman Lecture and the Killam Conversation. This year it is being held on Friday, March 2, 2012, 4-6 pm in the Dodson Room (#302) at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall (V6T 1Z1). Everyone is cordially invited to attend.

This year's Wyman Lecture is presented by Dr. Robert G. Evans, O.C., Professor Emeritus, Economics and Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, UBC.

Lecture Details:
"It Seemed Like a Good Idea... Innovation in a Wider Context"
The conviction that innovation will make the world a better place seems at present virtually universal. Research is then celebrated as the key to more rapid innovation, although the connection is not as direct as we researchers would like to think. But the recent success of Dutch researchers in genetically modifying the highly lethal H5N1 (bird flu) virus to make it more readily transmissible among humans, might at least give us pause. More generally, the inevitability of both unintended consequences, and of intended but malign consequences, implies that the uncritical celebration and promotion of innovation must rest on an underlying presumption either that innovations are universally, on balance, benign, or that our societies embody processes to screen out or suppress any adverse effects. Good luck with that.

The Killam Conversation is generated between Dr. Evans and a panel of UBC-based scholars:

• Dr. Michael Law (moderator)
  Faculty, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research,
  Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health
• Dr. Gillian Hanley
  Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Population and Public Health
• Ms. Lindsay Hedden
  PhD Candidate, School of Population and Public Health
• Dr. Barbara Mintzes
  Member, Drug Assessment Working Group, Therapeutics Initiative
  Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dr. Craig Mitton
  Senior Scientist, Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, VGH
  Associate Professor, School of Population and Public Health

The event demonstrates the tremendous contributions of the Killam Trusts to advance research at UBC, supporting faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. The Wyman Lecture is in honour of the late Robert Wyman, Killam Trustee (1987-2007) and Chancellor Emeritus of UBC. Mr. John Montalbano, a Killam Trustee, will introduce the event.