C2E2 2019 Annual Lecture Guest Speaker: Jean-Louis Denis
20 Years of Health Reforms in Canada: The Experience of Seven Provinces
Over the last 25 years there has been in many cases a failure to adapt to emerging health needs and priorities within health systems in Canada. This provides a strong policy rationale to search for alternative strategies that might produce much-needed reforms.
This annual lecture will explore the transformative capacity of provincial health systems focusing on three questions:
- Where have provincial governments invested their reform efforts in the last 20 years?
- What strategies have they employed?
- What lessons can reformers draw from these experiences?
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Health systems worldwide face a common policy challenge: how to deliver high quality care at affordable cost in an equitable way. However, despite persistent attempts at improvement, stasis appears pervasive in many systems. Over the last 25 years there has been in many cases a failure to adapt to emerging health needs and priorities within health systems in Canada. This provides a strong policy rationale to search for alternative strategies that might produce much-needed reforms. Within the natural laboratory Canada provides, our research team assessed both convergences and divergences in the strategies adopted in various provinces. Our interest in this research is to explore the transformative capacity of provincial health systems focusing on three questions: Where have provincial governments invested their reform efforts in the last 20 years? What strategies have they employed? What lessons can reformers draw from these experiences? This talk will provide an overview of this work and offer insight for the BC system.
Jean-Louis Denis is a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health, Université de Montréal, senior scientist on health system and innovation at the Research Center of the CHUM (CRCHUM) and holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier I) on health system design and adaptation. His current research looks at transformative capacities of health systems, the role of the medical profession in health policy and reforms and at the innovation-knowledge nexus in academic health science centers. Dr. Denis’ stature as a leader in his field is evident in the various appointments and honours he has held and received: member of the Academy of Social Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada (2002), fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2009) and fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (2019). He was chair of the advisory board of the CIHR’s Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (2009- 2012). In March 2015 he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Department of Management, King's College London and International Visiting Fellow at the King’s Fund (London) between 2014-2016. His work has been published in journals like BMC Health Services Research, Implementation Science, Family Practice, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Human Relations, Milbank Quarterly, Organization Science, Public Administration, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Academy of Management Journal and Academy of Management Annals. He is co-editor of the Palgrave series on Organizational Behaviours in Healthcare.
