Taking Back Health Care

Three years of coping with COVID-19 has given Canadians a crash course in what’s right and wrong with their health-care system, particularly under stress. There is now an urgent opportunity to leverage that experience, together with existing knowledge about reforms needed in several fundamental areas, to secure the future of Canadian health care.

PPF has assembled a group of reform-minded Canadians with deep roots in health care. Practitioners, administrators, and policy, academic and technology leaders have come together in a shared determination to provide provincial and federal governments with up-to-the-minute policy advice as the current health-care crisis unfolds. This year-long project will include an examination of primary care, data and digital technology, care and wellness of older people, and mental health services.

Our panel of experts includes: 

• Dr. Bob Bell, Professor Emeritus, Department of Surgery, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
• Georgina Black, Vice Chair & Managing Partner Government, Health & Life Sciences, Deloitte Canada
• Jodi Butts
• Beth Cowper-Fung, NP-PHC, MN, Clinic Director, The Georgina Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic
• Dr. Vivek Goel, President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor, Schools of Pharmacy and Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo
• Sonia Kumar, Member, CMA’s Patient Voice Group. CEO, Body Brave
• Dr. Alika Lafontaine, Former President, Canadian Medical Association
• Dr. Victoria Lee, Clinical Associate Professor, University of British Columbia; Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University
• David MacNaughton, President, Palantir Technologies Canada
• Dr. Kwame McKenzie, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto; CEO, Wellesley Institute
• Dr. Danielle Martin, Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
• Karen Oldfield, President and CEO, Nova Scotia Health Authority
• Dr. Jane Philpott, Dean, Queen’s University Health Science
• Dr. Verna Yiu, Interim Provost and Vice-President (Academic), University of Alberta

The group’s first report, called Taking Back Health Care: How to Accelerate People-Centred Reform Now, was published in January, 2023. An open letter to Canadians was published the same month, while Primary Care for Everyone was published in March, 2023. Next up: Data and Digital Technology.