News & Events
News
June 6, 2022 - From Canadian Institutes of Health Research
On June 6, 2022, MP Andy Fillmore announced an investment of nearly $1.5M for 3 projects led by researchers in Nova Scotia to understand the wider health impacts of the pandemic on Canadians.
Janice Graham (Director of TRRU) and her team received $489,566 to engage with social scientists, public health experts, and members of equity-deserving groups to develop recommendations for a more equitable and supportive healthcare governance framework in post-COVID Canada. Shawn Harmon (Co-Investigator) and Ksenia Kholina (Research Fellow) represented TRRU team at the announcement event.
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events at this time
Past Events
Poster Presentation at Maritime Health Research Summit: "Public Health Governance: Emerging Themes From Community Engagements Across Canada"
On Thursday October 24th 2024, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit research in medicine student Brianna Legere, and research assistant Ella Hunter presented on preliminary findings from Phase 2 of the Public Health Governance Project at the Maritime Health Research Summit.
Immunization Responses in Canada: A Nation-wide Analysis of Gaps in the "System"
View the recording here
On Wednesday December 8th 2021, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit presented a symposium at the Canadian Immunization conference on Immunization Responses in Canada: A Nation-wide Analysis of Gaps in the "System".
Scholarship undertaken throughout the pandemic has identified a range of gaps in Canada’s immunization governance landscape, some of them persisting despite long-running calls for reform (e.g., absence of patient-centred health information systems, absence of unified vaccine injury compensation scheme, closed-loop
nature of decision-making, etc.). During the COVID-19 pandemic, some gaps were addressed with ad hoc measures. Presenters in this symposium will identify governance gaps, examine public health interventions against the unfolding epidemiological data, and query the extent to which evidence-based decision-making was being pursued, and the extent to which Chief Medical Officers of Health and the Public Health Agency were empowered to serve their intended purposes.
Learning Objectives
• Describe a schema for an immunization framework that reflects responsible governance, appreciating how
different aspects of immunization fit into the overall schema.
• Identify, compare, and summarize differences in leadership, interventions, and outcomes in different parts of Canada, drawing on the epidemiological data available across Canada.
• Explore why different approaches were taken in different parts of Canada, again bearing in mind the demands of the concepts of responsible governance and responsible research and innovation.
• Illustrate how clearer standards and expectations can be instantiated in a legal framework to address some of the shortcomings identified.
Speakers
• Janice Graham, Director, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit
• Maya Lowe, Research Assistant, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit
• Rachel Parker, RIM Student, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit
• Ksenia Kholina, Research Fellow, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit
Moderator
• Shawn Harmon, Co-investigator, Technoscience and Regulation Research Unit
Transparency, Power and Influence in the Pharmaceutical Industry
View the recording here
On Thursday November 4th, the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance hosted a panel discussion on Transparency, Power and Influence in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Transparency in the realm of pharmaceuticals is a deeply contested policy issue. Doctors, patients, and their allies have fought for decades to make the evidence behind many prescription drugs publicly available. And while the level of transparency has improved significantly in recent years, a number of challenges remain. It's not clear, for example, whether the evidence now on offer is actually being used to make better decisions about which drugs to prescribe. Worse, there are growing concerns that the added transparency is giving cover to parallel efforts to lower regulatory standards for drug approval.
Speakers include:
- Katherine Fierlbeck - McCulloch Chair and Professor of Political Science at Dalhousie University
- Janice Graham - Professor of Medical Anthropology and Paediatrics (Infectious Diseases) at Dalhousie University
- Matthew Herder - Director of the Health Law Institute at Dalhousie University
- Nav Persaud - Staff Physician at St. Michael's Hospital and Canada Research Chair in Health Justice at the University of Toronto
- Constance MacIntosh (chair) - Acting Scholarly Director at the MacEachen Institute
4S Annual General Meeting
Virtual conference
October 6-9, 2021
TRRU Team hosted a panel entitled Evidence-based Medicine? Regulating Vaccines, Drugs and Other Health Products during COVID 19 and Beyond. The panel is chaired by Janice Graham, Director of TRRU and Matthew Herder, TRRU Co-investigator.
Featured presentations:
A Critical Political Economy Perspective on the Health Product Regulatory Authorities’ Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic by Ipek Iren Vural, TRRU Research Associate
Will Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies Benefit from COVID-19? Frictions, Evidence, and the Future of Regulation of Alternative Therapies by Agnieszka Doll, TRRU Postdoctoral Fellow
Psychedelics: Past, Present, Future
Webinar series
October - December 2021
TRRU and Centre for Access to Information and Justice co-hosted a webinar series in the Fall 2021 semester.
Featured webinars:
Psychedelics, Madness, and Dialectics of the Will by Dr. Tehseen N Noorani (UK) on October 26, 2021
What Can the Chemical Hold? The Politics of Efficacy in Psychedelic Science by Dr. Katherine Hendy (US) on November 30, 2021
Psychedelic New York: A Short History of LSD in a Global Metropolis by Dr. Christian Elcock (France) on December 9, 2021