ARCC Conference 2018

Geetanjali D Datta, MPH, ScD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Montreal School of Public Health and a Researcher at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center.  Her program of research focuses on explicating multilevel determinants across the cancer prevention continuum.  Her current Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded work focuses on individual- and macro-level determinants of cancer-related behaviors, including quasi-experimental evaluation of the impact of policy on inequalities.  She is currently the recipient of a cancer prevention career award from the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute. Dr. Datta received her doctoral degree in Epidemiology and postdoctoral training in Social Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, where she was the recipient of both the Kellogg and the Alonzo Smythe Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Michèle de Guise has been the Director of health services and technology evaluation for the Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS) in Québec since July 2015. She graduated from the Université de Montréal as a cardiologist and also completed a Master’s degree in Management at McGill University. Before joining INESSS, she held various positions at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, including Assistant Chief Medical Officer for Quality and Practice Improvement.

James Hanley (for more see his website http://www.biostat.mcgill.ca/hanley ) is a biostatistician who began his academic career in clinical trials with  the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group and the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group. He  joined McGill in 1980, where he first worked on developing methods to evaluate the accuracy of medical diagnostic tests. In the 90s he helped the Quebec Council for Technology Evaluation advise the Health Ministry on whether it should pay fo PSA tests for detecting prostate cancer. Since then his interests have broadened to cancer screening more generally, and in particular to ways to measure the mortality reductions  it produces. He has taught extensively and collaborated widely on topics from paediatrics to geriatrics. He has also written expository articles on statistics, and has a growing interest in the history of epidemiology and statistics.

Dr. Hoch’s experience is in health services research related to cancer, mental health, and other health issues affecting poor and vulnerable populations. An award winning teacher, Dr. Hoch has taught Health Economics and Economic Evaluation classes in the United States and internationally.  Dr. Hoch pursues research making health economics more useful to decision makers.  Dr. Hoch is one of the founding co-directors of ARCC.

Visit http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/publish/providerbio/search/21921 for more information

Dr. Jüni is the Director of the Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC) at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital and a Professor at the Department of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He graduated at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland, completed his training in internal medicine at various hospitals in Switzerland, and was a Research Fellow at the Department of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol, UK. Prior to joining St. Michael’s Hospital, Dr Jüni was the Director of the Institute of Primary Health Care and Professor of Primary Care and Clinical Epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He held previous appointments as Director of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern and Founding Director of CTU Bern, the University’s clinical trials unit.

Marie-Hélène Mayrand is a professor in the departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Social and Preventive Medicine at the Université de Montréal, where she completed her medical degree and specialty training. She completed her PhD in Epidemiology at McGill University, focusing the evaluation of a new cervical cancer-screening test.  Her professional work spans clinical, biomedical research and public health aspects of cancer prevention.  She practices colposcopy at the CHUM. She has led large multi-center trials focusing on more efficient prevention of cervical cancer through innovative screening/treatment algorithms and vaccination schedules.  Dr Mayrand has worked with professional (SOGC, SCC, GOC, CCS) and public health (INESSS, INSPQ, CIQ, CPAC) organizations to draft clinical guidelines, provide government reports/advice, and move public health and clinical practice in line with the best available evidence.

Carole McMahon is a patient member of the pan-Canadian Oncology Drug Review Expert Review Committee ( 2011 – present). She has experienced the role of primary care giver and is a cancer survivor. Carole participated in a clinical trial for treatment, and has first-hand experience with the issues of patients in a rural environment.

Carole holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a post-graduate Certificate in Dispute Resolution from York University.

Carole has participated as an invited panelist in number of conferences (CAHR,CAPT, CADTH, HTAi – PCISG,  Scotland, ) to share knowledge and experience in the areas of patient input, patient and citizen voices in an HTA environment, concept of value, perspectives, participation and impact, and pCODR- Perspectives and Innovation. She was an invited guest of the Scottish Medicines Consortium, co-authored a publication in Current Oncology, (Volume 21, Number 5) and was a contributor to the online patient tutorial ‘How Cancer Drug Funding Decisions are Made.”

Dr. Brian O’Rourke is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). He joined CADTH in January of 2009 following a distinguished career as a Pharmacist and Health Service Executive with the Canadian military. With over 30 years of experience in health care, Brian actively positions CADTH as the leading source of health technology information in Canada. He has a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from Dalhousie University and a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Toronto. Brian also serves as the Board Chair for the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment and served as Co-Chair of CHLNet from 2011 to 2015.

Dr. Dean Regier is a Scientist within Cancer Control Research, BC Cancer and the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC), and an Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia. Dr. Regier’s research focuses on improving methods to estimate preference-based utility, with applications to genetic and genomic technologies and the ‘value of genomic knowledge’ i.e. how genes play a role in our personal lives and how publics value and trade between benefits and risks when making decisions to undergo genomic testing. He incorporates this person-centred evidence into economic models that answer questions of value for money.

Dr. Michael Sherar is President and CEO of Cancer Care Ontario, a role he was appointed to in 2011. From 2006 to 2011, he was the provincial agency’s Vice-President, Planning and Regional Programs, leading the development of Regional Cancer Programs, including capital planning for cancer services across the province.
Dr. Sherar is an Affiliate Scientist at the Techna Institute University Health Network where he carries out research and development of minimally invasive thermal therapy technologies for cancer including radiofrequency ablation.
Dr. Sherar received a BA in Physics from Oxford University in 1985 and his PhD in Medical Biophysics from University of Toronto in 1989.

Dr. Maureen Trudeau is a Medical Oncologist, specializing in breast cancer. She is an Affiliate Scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. As co-chair and now member of the Breast Cancer Disease Site Group in the Program in Evidence-Based Care of Cancer Care Ontario, Dr. Trudeau is involved in practice guideline development. She has also been involved with the approval for funding of cancer drugs provincially since 2006; and nationally since 2012; as Vice Chair and now Chair for the Expert Review Committee of the Pan Canadian Oncology Drug Review.

Deirdre is a Health Economist working with PACER and the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC) at BC Cancer. She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Victoria. Her work focuses on preference elicitation and economic evaluation of precision medicine in oncology.

Dr Kelvin Chan is a medical oncologist at the Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Centre, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, and an associate scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute. He specializes in GI oncology and Head and Neck oncology. He has recently completed his PhD in Biostatistics (focusing on statistical methods in health economic evaluations) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.

As a clinical epidemiologist and biostatistician, Dr. Chan’s research interests include health services research, health technology assessment, meta-analysis including network meta-analysis, cost-effectiveness analyses, and statistical methods research in health economics. He is the Co-Director at the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC), funded by the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS).

Professionally, Dr Chan has an interest in cancer drug reimbursement related issues. He is a member of multiple provincial and national committees related to cancer drug assessments and recommendations including membership at the pan-Canadian Oncology Drug Review (pCODR) Expert Review Committee (pERC), the Committee to Evaluate Drug (CED) and the Interim Chair for the Ontario Steering Committee of Cancer Drugs (OSCCD), Ontario MOHLTC and Cancer Care Ontario. He is also the Clinical Lead for the Provincial Drug Reimbursement Programs (PDRP) at Cancer Care Ontario (CCO).

Dr. Wanrudee Isaranuwatchai is a Research Scientist (a health economist) at the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control and at St. Michael’s Hospital. She is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on how to apply economic evaluation in the real world setting as well as how to advance methods in economic evaluation. She has experience conducting economic evaluations using person-level data and decision modeling. She has collaborated with researchers and decision-makers in various areas to help communicate the value of health initiatives using economic evidence. Dr. Isaranuwatchai is dedicated to promoting the use of evidence in healthcare decision making.

Stuart Peacock holds the Leslie Diamond Chair in Cancer Survivorship and is a Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University. He is currently Co-Director of the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC). ARCC is a pan-Canadian research centre providing interdisciplinary leadership in health economics, services, policy and ethics research. Stuart is also a Distinguished Scientist in Cancer Control Research at the BC Cancer Agency, a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, and past President of the International Society on Priorities in Health Care. He has held university positions in Canada, Australia and the UK. Over the past 20 years, Stuart’s main research interests have focused on research into developing more effective cancer services, making health system funding decisions fairer and more transparent, and improving the quality of life of cancer patients and survivors.

Erin Strumpf, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University. She is a William Dawson Scholar and holds a Chercheur boursier career award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé.  She received her PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University and her BA from Smith College.

Dr. Strumpf’s research in health economics focuses on evaluating the impacts of health and social policies on the health and wellbeing of individuals and populations, on inequalities across groups, and on the performance of the health care system. She uses administrative health data, large-scale surveys, and methods for causal inference – principally quasi-experimental designs – to estimate the effects of interventions and reforms in real-world settings. Dr. Strumpf and her research team actively collaborate with decision makers to generate relevant, usable knowledge to improve population health and health care system performance. She has presented her work to provincial ministries of health and of finance in Canada, and to policymakers in France and the United States.