37th Annual Health Policy Conference | March 3-4, 2025
The 37th annual CHSPR health policy conference confronted the primary care crisis. With primary care stretched beyond its limits, it is necessary for provincially delivered and funded systems to learn from each other and more quickly apply evidence to practice. Speakers engaged with approaches that are being implemented to support patients in navigating primary care, address workforce shortages, decrease inefficiencies, and use data to transform care.
CHSPR’s long-standing conference promotes discussion between policy-makers, academics, providers, trainees, patients and national organizations on timely issues shaping health systems in Canada. The 2025 conference brought together participants from diverse groups and from across the country to discuss ways to manage, deliver and finance primary care that aims to achieve the Quintuple Aim; exploring ways to increase health care equity through innovations in care delivery. Addressing challenges in our primary care systems requires co-designing strategies, collaborative dialogues, and coordinating activities, and the conference engaged with this transformative work.
Download the conference summary report
Program
Monday, March 3
9:00 am | Pre-conference Workshops
More than six million people lacking regular access to a primary care provider who is either a family physician or nurse practitioner to address their health needs. Solutions for addressing primary care access challenges require fostering collaborative dialogues, strategies and associated coordinated activities, as no single provider or solution can meet all individual or jurisdictional needs. The development of team-based, interprofessional primary care supports a comprehensive, coordinated, person-centred care approach with a focus on ensuring continuity of care and health equity. It is characterized by interprofessional collaboration wherein all health care providers are working to optimal scope of practice and enabled by digital technology, continuous quality improvement and other professional practice supports required to meet diverse population health needs and healthcare disparities. While evaluation of team-based, interprofessional primary care has not yet begun in many provinces, program leads have been onboarded and there are early conversations about evaluating the implementation of team-based, interprofessional primary care. Each province and territory with bilateral agreements may be required to consider evaluation metrics for implementation of team-based care.
Objectives
- Provide input on the domains that ought to be used in evaluating the implementation and outcomes of team based primary care.
- Discuss evaluation strategies to measure the impact and outcomes of team based primary care, according to fidelity to core principles, guidelines or standards, and equity considerations (e.g. LGBTQ+, racialized groups, language minorities).
Pre-Reading
This workshop brought together the BC Primary Health Care Research Network, Canadian Primary Care Research Network, and Canadian Primary Care Trials Network patient advisories to co-design publicly available knowledge products that could arise from the CHSPR conference (e.g. investigator/patient blog, podcast) in addition to kicking off discussions about strategies to increase underrepresented populations’ participation in primary care clinical trials. This second discussion item is expected to carry on past the CHSPR conference through a series of discussions through 2025. The deliverable will be strategies and recommendations for increasing participation in primary care clinical trials.
Objectives
- Identify and agree upon knowledge translation and mobilization of conference learnings that would be most interesting to persons with lived experience (PWLE)/public.
- Engage in dialogue on increasing PWLE participation in practice-based research and learning network projects.
1:00 pm | Welcome Remarks
Sabrina Wong, Professor, CHSPR
Aslam Anis, Director, UBC School of Population and Public Health
Paul Hébert, President, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Ted Patterson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Primary Care Division, BC Ministry of Health
1:20 pm | Anne Crichton Lecture | Building High-Performing Primary Care Systems: After a Decade of Policy Change, is Canada “Walking the Talk?”
Chair: Ted Patterson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Primary Care Division, BC Ministry of Health
Speaker: Monica Aggarwal, Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto
Followed by audience Q&A | Learn more about the Anne Crichton Lecture | Watch the recording
2:15 pm | Improving Provider Experiences Amid a Primary Care Workforce Shortage
Chair: Michael Law, Professor, CHSPR
Speaker: Ivy Bourgeault, Professor, University of Ottawa [slides]
Discussant: Laura Housden, Executive Director, Nurse Practitioners, Fraser Health
Discussant: Rita McCracken, Assistant Professor, Department of Family Practice, University of BC
Followed by audience Q&A
3:35 pm | Improving Population Health: Accelerating Health Care Equity for All Through Team-Based Care
Chair: Gene Patterson, Director, eHealth, First Nations Health Authority
Speaker: Shannon Berg, Executive Director, Primary Health Care and Virtual Services, First Nations Health Authority
Speaker: Treena Klassen, Executive Director, Palliser Primary Care Network
Speaker: Jennifer Rayner, Director of Research and Policy, Alliance for Healthier Communities
Followed by audience Q&A
Tuesday, March 4
9:15 am | Improving Patient Experiences and Outcomes in Primary Care
Chair: Brenda Andreas, Member, Patient Council, Canadian Primary Care Research Network
Speaker: Norma Rabbitskin, Senior Health Nurse, Sturgeon Lake Health Centre
Speaker: Ghislaine Rouly, Member, Patient Council, Canadian Primary Care Research Network
Speaker: Walter Wodchis, Professor, University of Toronto [slides]
Speaker: Vivian Ramsden, Professor, University of Saskatchewan
Followed by audience Q&A
11:15 am | Better Value in Primary Care: Where Are the Data and What is it Going to Cost?
Chair: Jason Sutherland, Professor, CHSPR
Speaker: Sacha Bhatia, Executive Vice President, Primary and Community-Based Care, Ontario Health
Discussant: Ray Messom, Principal, Nous Group
Followed by audience Q&A
1:15 pm | Better Value in Primary Care: Harnessing Digital Health and Learning Health Systems Approach
Chair: Rubee Dev, Professor, CHSPR
Speaker: Onil Bhattacharyya, Director, Institute for Health Systems Solutions and Virtual Care, Women’s College Hospital; and Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Speaker: Shaneel Pathak, Member, Patient Council, Canadian Primary Care Research Network; and CEO, Zamplo Inc. [slides]
Speaker: Mohamed Alarakhia, Family Physician, Centre for Family Medicine Family Health Team; and CEO, eHealth Centre of Excellence [slides]
Followed by audience Q&A
2:40 pm | Closing Keynote: Health for All
Chair: Rick Glazier, Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research
Speaker: Robert Phillips, Founding Executive Director, Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care, American Board of Family Medicine Foundation
Followed by audience Q&A
3:30-3:45 pm | Summary and Closing
Rick Glazier, Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research
Sabrina Wong, Professor, CHSPR