Moving Palliative and End-of-life Care Forward

May 17-21, 2010
Tory Building TB 95
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Stephen (Steve) Birch, BA (Sheffield), MSc. (Bath), DPhil (York)

Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, a member of The Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at the School of Earth, Environment & Society, and a member of the McMaster Institute for Environment and Health at McMaster University.

He holds a part time Chair in Health Economics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, along with visiting appointments at the University of Technology in Sydney Australia, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and the University of Malmo in Sweden. He is Senior Scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre on Health Human Resources Planning at Dalhousie University. His extensive background in the evaluation of models for the funding and delivery of health care include the development of needs-based approaches to health care resource allocation, the evaluation of alternative delivery modalities for primary care in Ontario and the analysis of alternate payments for the provision of primary dental care.

His work on needs-based funding models has been used in the development of funding formulae in many jurisdictions in Canada and he served as consultant on the implementation of the population-based approach to funding health care services in Saskatchewan in the early 1990s - the first application of this approach in Canada. He authored the report on principles and prospects for physician payment reform (the “Paying the Piper” report) for the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Conference of Deputy Ministers of Health and he served on the Task Force subsequently formed to develop physician reform policies arising from the report (The Kilshaw Committee). He was a consultant to the Barer-Stoddart report on physician human resources providing expertise on international experiences with physician human resources planning and management. He served on the Methodology Sub Committee for the George Committee concerned with physician human resources policy in Ontario. He has served as a consultant with WHO and the World Bank on health human resource policies and was a co-investigator on the Canadian Nursing Sector Study on human resources planning. He has also served as economic consultant on evaluation projects in Malaysia, India, and the Northwest Territories.

His main research interests are in the economics of healthcare systems with particular emphasis on equity, resource allocation, and alternative delivery models. He has over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is Senior Editor for Social Science and Medicine. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network, a past council member on Ontario’s Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council, and previously served on the Board of the Hamilton District Health Council. He is widely sought for and involved in many local, provincial, national, and international endeavors to improve health care performance, including health system or health care cost-effectiveness.

Topic:

• What is now known about knowledge translation – a second generational and applied review of KT progress, with a specific focus on policy-makers and decision-makers use of research information

TopicDetail