OTTAWA - On September 21 the University of Ottawa and the Faculty of Health Sciences officially launched three research networks:

• The Population Health Improvement Research Network (PHIRN)
• The Ontario Population Health of Francophone Minority Research Network, and
• The Ontario Health Human Resources Research Network.

These networks were launched as part of the Applied Health Research Network Initiative, a program overseen by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. A total of $1.75 million will be allocated annually to the University of Ottawa for these three networks over five years.

The Population Health Improvement Network was created to support high-quality health research that addresses complex issues that affect health and health equity using a collaborative approach. The network will serve to produce and disseminate new knowledge, best practices and policies.

The PHIRN is housed within the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa and headed by Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault (Faculty of Health Sciences) as scientific director, along with Professor Nancy Edwards (School of Nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine) as scientific advisor. It is divided into two research branches – one on Patterns and Pathways of Inequities, which is co-lead by uOttawa Professor Ronald Labonté (Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine), and University of Toronto researcher Carlos Quinonez and the other on Population Health Interventions co-lead by Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and uOttawa Professor Douglas Manuel and McMaster University Professor Jim Dunn.

The Ontario Population Health of Francophone Minority Research Network will be co-lead by Louise Bouchard (Institute for Population Health) and Marie-Hélène Chomiene (Montfort Hospital). It will focus on a number of issues such as the knowledge and monitoring of health status and its determinants in Francophone communities in Ontario; specific needs related to health services of Ontario Francophone populations and health-care professionals offering health services in French; models of care and the performance of the health care system in a linguistic minority setting.

The Ontario Health Human Resources Research Network will be lead by Dr. Bourgeault and the Ontario Research Chair in Health Human Resources at McMaster University. In addition to building Ontario research capacity, the network will coordinate critical research on human resources in the health field including issues of supply, mix and distributions. Other related issues that will be explored are training, planning, regulation and management of the Ontario health workforce.