HSPR Talks: Re-Examining Canada's Universal Health Care

A lecture to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the journal
Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques

Join us virtually!
November 12, 2024, 12:00pm - 1:00PM ET

Canada has long held its universal health care system as a point of pride. The principles of Canada's universal health care system are enshrined in the 1984 Canada Health Act (CHA). Now that almost 40 years have passed since the establishment of the CHA, we propose to (re)examine the system's redistributive and equitable nature.

Amélie Quesnel-Vallée holds the Canada Research Chair in Policies and Health Inequalities at McGill University, where she is Inaugural Chair and Professor in the Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy, as well as a Professor in the Department of Sociology. She leads CAnD3, an international consortium of 38 academic, government, private and nonprofit organizations delivering training in support of data-driven decision making in ageing societies. Her research examines the contribution of policies to social inequalities in health over the life course.

The presented research is joint with Emmanuelle Arpin, a Fonds de recherche du Québec Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University. She obtained her PhD in 2022 in Health Services Research (Health Economics) at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation examined the long-term effects of chronic health conditions in childhood on health and socioeconomic status in young adulthood in the US and Canada.

Anna Zajacova is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Western University. Her research, funded by the National Institutes of Health and SSHRC, examines the trends, social causes and consequences of chronic pain. She holds doctoral degrees in sociology and demography from Princeton. She is moderating in her capacity as Co-editor of Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques, one of a number of academic editorial positions she holds.