Researcher Mehdi Ammi Awarded CIHR Team Grant
Professor Mehdi Ammi, a faculty member in Carleton’s School of Public Policy & Administration, will lead a team of researchers and partners from across Canada on a new project entitled, “Public Health Financing and Equity: Building Evidence and Networks for Resilient Systems in Canada.” The project will be supported for three years by a $749,700 grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, through their Team Grant program supporting research on the theme of Strengthening Resilient & Equitable Public Health Systems.
“Since beginning researching this topic in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that a deeper understanding of the trends, determinants, and impacts of public health financing in Canada is needed,” says Professor Ammi. “I was excited to see the call for a Team Grant dedicated to public health systems, and thrilled and honored that our project was selected through such a highly competitive process.”
Building on several years of collaboration and leadership in the area of public health financing research, the team will leverage its extensive network of academic, public sector, and community partners to address critical gaps in Canada’s capacity to monitor and improve public health financing through an equity lens.
“Professor Ammi’s research promises to have profound impact on Canada’s public health system,” says Josh Greenberg, Associate Dean (Research and Graduate). “With this timely and important grant, Mehdi continues to build a strong profile within Canada and internationally as a leading health economist and health policy researcher.”
Over the next three years, Professor Ammi and his STEPS team will analyze differences in public health spending across provinces and regions, assess how public health and social spending together influence and are influenced by population health and health inequities, and work together to design and pilot one of Canada’s first learning health systems for public health financing in Québec, Ontario and British Columbia.
This project is anchored by a bilingual tri-partite leadership team representing Canada’s three largest provinces. Along Professor Ammi, the tri-partite leadership team include Lara Miramontes from the British Columbia Ministry of Health, and Thomas Bastien from the Association pour la Santé Publique du Québec (ASPQ). The team of co-investigators also includes Carleton’s School of Public Policy and Administration Assistant Professor Ardyn Nordstrom.
This is the second CIHR Team Grant awarded to a Faculty of Public and Global Affairs researcher in 2026. CIHR Team Grants support larger, cross-sectoral research teams conducting health-related research, contributing to the Faculty of Public and Global Affairs vision to lead, connect and transform.