# The Alliance is committed to continuous learning that can advance our collective vision of the best possible health and wellbeing for everyone living in Ontario.

Our research program interacts with the Model of Health and Wellbeing in two ways: The model informs our research questions and methods, and the knowledge generated by our research provides insights into how best to operationalize the model and adapt it to local contexts. Research helps us to understand the populations we serve; to recognize emerging health challenges, such as loneliness and isolation; and to evaluate new and ongoing programs and services so we know what’s working and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Research also helps us to tell our story. We know our members’ work is immensely valuable to the communities and individuals they serve. In order to ensure that our partners and stakeholders recognize this, we need clear data. This includes quantitative data – numbers – that demonstrate this value at a system and population level, as well as qualitative data – stories – that show how our work impacts individual patients, caregivers, and providers. Sharing our knowledge through conferences, presentations and publication in peer-reviewed journals helps us reach as many people as possible.

Research at the Alliance is a pillar of our EPIC Learning Health System. EPIC stands for Equity, Performance, Improvement, and Change.  

Our research program is led by Dr. Jennifer Rayner, our Director of Research and policy. Like our members' work, Alliance research is collaborative and crosses sector lines. We work with over 50 research partners from academia, primary care, and public health.  

The EPIC Learning Health System

The Alliance and our members have always been committed to research, evaluation, and quality improvement. A Learning Health System (LHS) brings these elements together in a different way. It gathers information from practice and research and feeds it back to teams in ways that are meaningful and useable to them. This in turn leads to practice change that improves care. 

Our journey of becoming a Learning Health System has been underway for more than five years, and it has been a focus of the Alliance’s work since 2019. On October 29, 2020, our Executive Leaders’ Network approved making an intentional shift to become a Learning Health System (LHS).  Formally adopting this shift as a strategy was not the end of the journey but the beginning of a new phase.

To learn more about Alliance research, collaborate with us, or request data for your academic or community-based research, please email LHS@AllianceON.org.

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Dr. Jennifer Rayner

Jennifer Rayner is the Director of Research and Policy at the Alliance for Healthier Communities, where she supports 100+ community based primary care organizations in Ontario. She is an applied health services researcher with interests in primary health care, interprofessional teams, health equity, and learning health systems.  

Jennifer is also a Research Professor at Western University within the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine; an Associate Professor at University of Toronto in the Department of Community and Family Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation; and a scientist with ICES.  She works in collaboration with researchers, evaluators and policy makers to improve care for people with barriers. Her community based primary care experience includes leadership roles in policy, planning, performance, accountability and quality improvement. 

Jennifer received her PhD of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western and completed post-doctoral training at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). 

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Recent highlights

# Here are some of our recent research highlights:

  • A study of how COVID impacts people experiencing homelessness was published in the journal CMAJ Open on January 11, 2021. Key findings:
    • People with a recent experience of homelessness were more likely than others in the community to be tested for COVID-19 and to have a positive test result.
    • Among people with a positive test result, those with a recent experience of homelessness were more likely to be admitted to hospital, over 10 times more likely to require intensive care, and over 5 times more likely to die within three weeks.
  • The First Peer-Reviewed Canadian Study on Social Prescribing was published in the journal BGJP Open on January 5, 2021. It shows that participants' positive experiences align with a theory of motivation known as Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a clue to how the program works to improve health outcomes.
  • An article about how the community primary healthcare sector responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with equity-based interventions to support social connectedness, food and housing security, and care continuity was published in Longwoods Healthcare Quarterly in October 2020. 

For a list of all Alliance-led research publications, and links where applicable, visit our research library. For the latest news from our research team, check out our monthly newsletter, EPIC News.

Ongoing projects

# Here are some of our ongoing research projects

# Primary Healthcare and COVID-19

  • Primary care and COVID-19 Response 
  • Virtual care during COVID-19 and implications for future care delivery
  • COVID-19: The Role of Leaders in Shifting to and Sustaining Virtual Delivery of Social Programs
  • Recommendations for Patient-Centred Telemedicine: Learning from Patients’ Experiences with synchronous virtual primary care encounters during the COVID-19 Pandemic
  • Deferred Outcomes in Canadian Children and Youth: Measuring and Mitigating risk during COVID-19.
  • COVID-19 among the populations served by Aboriginal Health Access Centres and Indigenous Governed Community Health Centres

# Other Research Projects

  • Evaluation of Rx: Community 
  • Evaluation of TeamCare.
  • Effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams and other primary care reforms in Ontario
  • Spread and Sustainability of Integrated Models of Team-Based Care for the Management of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
  • Health Outcomes and the Association with Primary Care Use Following Transfer to Adult Healthcare Services amongst Young People with Neurologic Impairment and Technology Dependence in Ontario:
  • Primary Care for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness (PRiSMI)
  • Advancing knowledge of homelessness: Expanding use of administrative datasets in Ontario:
  • Optimizing Canada's Healthcare for Refugees
  • Diabetes Action Canada – Project OPEN

As studies are published and presented at conferences, we post links to them in our online research library.

Connect with us

# Get in touch. Stay in touch.