CIHR Training Program in
Health Law, Ethics and Policy
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
84 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2C5
email: info@healthlawtraining.ca
Tel: 1 + 416.978.3724
Fax: 1 + 416.978.2648
Our Program brings together internationally renowned Canadian
scholars of health law, ethics and policy with a group of
stellar scholars in other relevant disciplines. Our members have
been particularly successful in transmitting their extensive and
wide-ranging knowledge to upcoming researchers and in creating
interdisciplinary bridges in scholarship and education.
Excellence in Research - Our team
consists of researchers with exemplary research and
publication records who have published dozens of highly
influential books, hundreds of book chapters and peer
reviewed articles in leading journals in the fields of law,
health policy, bioethics, medicine, science, philosophy, and
political science. They have presented their research at
local, regional, national, and international conferences of
law, medical sciences, public policy and bioethics and have
received numerous peer-reviewed research grants, both large
operational and more narrowly focused investigational grants
from a wide variety of funding agencies, such as CIHR,
SSHRC, CHSRF, Genome Canada, NIH, NCE, Gates Foundation, and
Fogarty. Among these stellar scholars we have five Canada
Research Chairs (Flood, Downie, Caulfield, Upshur and Lee),
four Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada (Caulfield,
Scherer, Sherwin and Tuohy) a Rhode Scholar (Lahey) and a
former member of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton (Lemmens). Several of them have won prestigious
prizes such as the Killam Prize and the Canadian Bioethics
Lifetime Achievement Award (Sherwin) and the Ludwik and
Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize (Cook).
Interdisciplinary Research - Our team
members are committed multidisciplinary researchers, and
most hold cross-appointments. For example, Trudo Lemmens is
primarily appointed into the Faculty of Law with
cross-appointments to the Institute of Medical Sciences, the
Department of Genetics and Microbiology, the Department of
Psychiatry, and the Joint Centre for Bioethics. Of
particular relevance to the goals of our Program is that
most of our mentors contribute to health policy making as
members and chairs of research ethics boards, professional
bodies, advisory committees at provincial, federal and
international levels, and as special advisors to ministers
and parliamentary committees. Members integrate trainees
into these policy activities.
Successful Trainers - Our team
members have collectively supervised hundreds of graduate
students at both the master’s and doctoral levels. Most of
our mentors have written or contributed to the writing of
textbooks in their field of expertise, further demonstrating
their commitment to training. For example, Downie, Flood and
Caulfield co-edited the leading text on health law and
policy in Canada.
The team also demonstrates a tremendous commitment in
co-authoring with students – Downie, Flood and Caulfield,
for example, have collectively co-authored 45 papers with
students. Team members also provide unique opportunities for
students to be involved in policy work. Lemmens included
CIHR trainees as authors of two reports of international
interdisciplinary workshops he organized as part of a Genome
Canada funded research project, for example, and he has also
included trainees in policy work for the World Health
Organization and Health Canada.
Effective Collaborative Mentorship -
Our team members are particularly well suited to the
Program’s collaborative mentorship structure because of
their long-standing interdisciplinary experience and track
record in collaborative research. Furthermore, as a result
of our Program’s innovative, modular structure, the team’s
training capacity is greater than the sum of its parts.
Drawing from our multidisciplinary team of experts, we are
able to construct mentoring teams with precisely the
expertise required for each student’s specific training
needs. By coordinating mentoring teams across institutions
and disciplinary boundaries, our program adds value to
Canada’s existing teaching capacity: no academic department,
faculty, or even institution, working in isolation, can
match the training capacity achieved by our elastic,
cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary model. Moreover, our
approach to training is novel in the tradition of law
schools and is challenging established norms.
