Position Available: Epidemiology Fellow, Canadian Partnership Against Cancer

Reports to:                 Program Manager, Health Economics

Location:                    Toronto (Downtown)

Status:                        12-Month Fellowship (paid)

Start Date:                  April 3, 2017

For more information, visit the CPAC website by clicking here

Overview of Role

This position will support the Health Economics initiative, within the Strategy division. This program of work will enhance the capacity of the cancer control system to quantify the burden of cancer, including health and economic costs, allowing for the evaluation of the impact of existing and potential cancer control interventions and driving evidence-based decision-making. It will also allow us to quantify the impact of a collaborative approach to implementing a pan-Canadian cancer control strategy. This work will leverage OncoSim, formerly the Cancer Risk Management Model) a comprehensive, web-based, decision-support modelling tool that projects population-based health and economic impacts of cancer control programs in Canada. The microsimulation projections allow health system leaders, researchers and policy makers to test “what-if” scenarios related to potential cancer control interventions. Users can access the OncoSim platform via a web interface and develop customized scenarios to inform current and impending health policy decisions.

In this role, the Fellow will assist in a number of projects by supporting internal and external partners with economic evaluation using OncoSim and other tools. At the same time it will offer the successful candidate experiential learning opportunities in the not-for-profit health sector and exposure to the policy-making process. This work will include conducting literature reviews, scenario development, data and policy analysis, report writing and developing presentations, and supporting internal and external stakeholders, amongst other tasks. In this role, the Fellow may be tasked with activities such as:

• Reviewing literature for direct and indirect costs related to cancer from a societal perspective
• Analyzing scenarios and developing presentations for key partners and stakeholders (e.g. the health and economic impact of vaccinating girls/boys against HPV)
• Conducting comparisons of OncoSim outputs to published cancer evidence for model validation purposes (in particular, the breast cancer model)
• Supporting manuscript development
• Providing analytics and graphics for OncoSim knowledge mobilization products, updating the user guide to explain the models, and more.

 Qualifications

• Master’s degree underway or recently completed in health economics, epidemiology, statistics, public health, information science or related field
• Experience working with health data, preferably cancer-related
• Experience using data and information to inform health policy
• Experience in knowledge mobilization an asset
• Interest in or experience with microsimulation modelling preferred
• Ability to communicate technical knowledge in a simple and effective manner for various audiences
• Excellent research, analytical, interpretive and problem solving skills
• Excellent technical skills with Excel and other Microsoft Office products
• Ability to establish effective working relationships with key internal and external stakeholders, partners and colleagues
• Strong organizational, process development and coordination skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Knowledge and demonstrated experience of health sector issues/challenges, preferably cancer

Anticipated Skills/Knowledge/Experiential Learning Acquired through Fellowship

• Familiarization with the Canadian cancer control landscape and key partners and stakeholders
• Familiarization with evidence creation and knowledge mobilization for policy-making in cancer control
• Familiarization with Canadian and provincial programmatic work in cancer control
• Experience working on pan-Canadian projects involving multiple external stakeholders
• Experience working in multi-disciplinary project teams
• Understanding of cancer and other health-related datasets
• Exposure to micro-simulation modelling, and specifically, OncoSim
• Experience running model simulations, extracting and interpreting results
• Opportunities to practice critical thinking by developing written reports, briefing notes, and/or presentations for internal and external audiences
• Opportunities to coauthor academic publications and conference abstracts
• Opportunities to lead small research projects under supervision of manager
• Opportunities to develop relationships with academics and non-academics in cancer control

Forward applications to TM@partnershipagainstcancer.ca

CLOSING DATE:  February 24, 2017