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Health Systems Impact

In medical and health professional education, social accountability means that the upstream activities of educational institutions should aim to impact the health and health systems of the communities they serve. This means that organizational structures, curriculum design, pedagogy, research, and services must be designed, implemented, and evaluated in alignment with communities’ needs and priorities. At MERLIN, we support research on how, and in what ways, education can impact community health and health care!

Resources and Recent Publications

Below are some great resources and publications coming out of the research being conducted at MERLIN!

NEW: OHT Framework Policy Brief: Wood B, French M, Jewett RL, Daneshmand R, Meservia-Collins K, Hart K, Cameron E, Kabel J, Neil C, Logozzo J. (2023). A learning health system framework for Northwestern Ontario Health Teams. NOSM University.

Mobilizing an Integrated Knowledge Translation Collaboration During COVID-19 in Northwestern Ontario edited by Chris McCutcheon, Jessica Reszel, Anita Kothari & Ian D Graham

Impacts of Social Accountability: Development of a Framework for Northern Ontario Communities, Health Professional Education, and Heath Services poster presented at TUFH 2021 by Drs. Brianne Wood and Erin Cameron, and Ghislaine Attema

Social Accountability as the Framework For Engagement (SAFE) for Health Institutions post presented at TUFH 2020 by Alex Anawati, Erin Cameron, Jacqueline Harvey, Bradley Rietze, Amber Tooley, Penny-Moody Corbett, Maureen McLelland, and Chris Bourdon

Social Accountability as the Framework for Engagement for Health Institutions: – The SAFE for HI Evaluation Tool poster presented at TUFH 2021 by Drs. Alex Anawati and Erin Cameron

Social Accountability as the Framework for Engagement for Health Institutions: – Developmental Evaluations as a Method to Improve the SAFE for HI Evaluation Tool poster presented at TUFH 2021 by Drs. Alex Anawati and Erin Cameron

Social Accountability as the Framework for Engagement for Health Institutions: – The SAFE for HI Peer Review poster presented at TUFH 2021 by Drs. Alex Anawati and Erin Cameron

Current Projects in Northern Ontario

  • Developing a social accountability impact framework for NOSM University – this multi-study project aims to develop a framework and set of indicators to assess NOSM University’s progress toward social accountability (leads: Drs. Brianne Wood and Erin Cameron)
  • Learning health systems and socially accountable health professional education – this project compares and contrasts two prominent frameworks in order to advance a common goal of value creation in health and health care (lead: Dr. Brianne Wood)
  • COVID-19 in northern, rural, and isolated regions – this project examines the literature and includes a survey of the Northwestern Ontario health workforce to understand the impacts of the pandemic in Wave 1 (lead: Dr. Brianne Wood)
  • An evidence-informed primary health care workforce planning model for Northern Ontario – this project involves multiple qualitative and quantitative studies with health planning leaders, physicians and health professionals, and community leaders across Northern Ontario to develop a model to support planning for a “fit-for-purpose” primary health care workforce (leads: Drs. Erin Cameron and Brianne Wood)
  • Practice-based research and learning networks: Indigenous data sovereignty, medical education – this project refers to the collaboration with the NOSM University Research Toward Health Hub (NORTHH) and some of the relevant research to advance NOSM University’s practice-based research and learning network. In particular, this means understanding and promoting Indigenous data sovereignty using data governance principles, as well as understanding how we can conduct medical education research with NORTHH data (leads: Drs. Brianne Wood and Barb Zelek)

Feeling inspired and want more information? Contact us today to learn more about our projects, get involved, or share your project. We see this as a space for connecting people, places, and projects!

Who are we?

The health system impact research group brings together people who are leading health system transformation in Northern Ontario through research, education, and health care. Our group includes researchers, educators, health system administrators, physicians and health professionals, patients, learners, among others. Our group and our projects aim to support health system stakeholders at any point in the research lifecycle, from developing an idea into a research question to methods/analysis to knowledge translation.

We are situated within MERLIN and the Dr. Gilles Arcand Centre for Health Equity at NOSM University.

Research Groups