Research

Our current CIHR funded Public Health Governance project incorporates legal, policy, and social science research to examine the key shortcomings of Canada's public health system, toward the development of a more coherent, holistic, evidence-based and inclusive public health framework, informed by a Planetary One Health approach.

Research activities include:

• Legal and jurisdicational scoping of Canadian public health governance policies, programs, practices, and funding.
• Key informant interviews with Canadian public health experts and actors
• Secondary analysis of qualitative datasets collected with marginalized groups during the COVID-19 pandemic 
• Focus groups with representatives of marginalized gorups, frontline health care workers, and grassroots experts across Canada
• National and international workshops to deliberate on key public health challenges and foresight solutions

All of these activities will culminate in the proposal of a national Population Health and Wellbeing Act: An Act to Care. For more information on this project, visit the Public Health Governance page.

Our research brings together diverse theoretical and methodological disciplinary expertise. Research topics have focused on the relational and material aspects of human and non-human encounters in the regulation of emerging therapeutic and food products (eg. GMOs), pharmaceuticals, biologics, and vaccines.

Research at TRRU extends far beyond our physical Canadian offices. We regularly conduct multi-sited ethnographic projects on a global scale. Wherever our research interests may be, TRRU finds a way to be there too.

Fieldwork sites for our research include: 

•        Clinical trial sites
•        Pharmaceutical, biologic and vaccine manufacturers
•        Agri-biotech laboratories
•        Expert advisory committees
•        Regulatory agencies
•        Health technology assessment agencies
•        Policy development and implementation settings
•        Patient activists organizations
•        Multilateral organizations
•        Communities affected by products of bioscience

Recent Research Goals and Accomplishments

Currently, we are working several CIHR-funded projects, including Global Vaccine Logics, which seeks to garner a better understanding of the decision-making practices and experiences of all involved in the roll-out of the Ebola vaccine and clinical trials in West Africa.

Completed projects:

•       Articulating Standards
•       Constituting Commercialization 
•       Risks & Regulation
•       Vaccines of the 21^st Century
•       Immunizing Health Care Workers

Learn more about the TRRU’s funding sources.