The year 2022 marks a major milestone for IHPME as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of our Institute. As we take time this year to commemorate our remarkable history, we are also looking to the future with the launch of our 2022–2027 Strategic Plan.
In late 2020 and early 2021, during a time of unparalleled upheaval due to COVID-19, our students, staff, and faculty came together ‘virtually’ to envision the future of our Institute—a future that looks very different than what we would have imagined before the pandemic.
Our new 2022–2027 Strategic Plan reflects how healthcare and our world have changed and will continue to change. Through this strategy, we will strengthen IHPME’s role in helping accelerate healthcare transformation through our expertise in areas such as policy, leadership development, research, and evaluation. We also confirm how we plan to shift internally, focusing on growth, while becoming more inclusive and collaborative.
Our planning process builds on the achievements of our previous strategies and breaks new ground. It is both exhilarating and inspiring to reflect on where we go from here, how we further develop our Institute, cultivate the next generation of health system scholars and leaders, and support our students, faculty, staff, and partners to renew and thrive.
We thank all the students, staff, faculty, and partners who have contributed their insights to the development of the 2022–2027 IHPME strategic plan. We look forward to working with our entire IHPME community to realize our collective vision and goals.
An Inclusive Approach to Strategic Planning
We began our strategic planning in December 2020 with a survey inviting all students and faculty to share their views on IHMPE’s most significant opportunities and priorities for the next five years.
We also asked our IHPME Executive Committee members for their advice on the most important emerging areas of focus for our Institute. The perspectives on the future were wide-ranging and included many critical issues that will impact health and healthcare ranging from workforce sustainability and anti-racism, to climate change and advanced data analytics.
The initial consultations informed the content for three separate virtual planning workshops in the first half of 2021, during which participants from across IHPME worked together to identify the most important areas of focus for IHPME over the next five years. Having three workshops enabled us to go deeper in exploring the future of our Institute and progressively develop our (i) strategic priorities, (ii) research and teaching priorities, and (iii) approach to fostering excellence through equity, diversity, and inclusion.
In May 2021 we completed our draft strategy, which was approved by our Executive Committee in July 2021. During fall 2021, we finalized our design work, and then launched the Strategic Plan in January 2022. Over the next few years, we will continue to evaluate our progress and performance and revisit our strategic priorities as new opportunities and challenges arise.
Planning Timeline
Step 1: Stakeholder Survey
December 2020
Launch of faculty and staff questionnaire seeking input on areas of emphasis for strategy development, partnerships, resources, and workplace.
Step 2: Executive Committee Consultations
January 2021
Feedback and input from the IHPME Executive Steering Committee on strategy and areas of focus for research and teaching.
Step 3: 1st Planning Workshop – Strategic Priorities
January 2021
Consultation with faculty, staff and students to identify and prioritize the strategic areas of focus for IHPME.
Step 4: 2nd Planning Workshop – Academic Priorities
March 2021
Consultation with faculty, staff and students to identify and prioritize the academic of focus for IHPME.
Step 5: 3rd Planning Workshop – Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
April 2021
Consultation with faculty, staff and students to identify and prioritize actions to improve equity, diversity and inclusion.
Step 6: Draft Strategic Plan Review
May 2021
Review and feedback on draft strategy.
Defining our Shared Purpose
For the last decade or more, IHPME has had separate vision and mission statements to define our mandate and direction.
These comprehensive statements reflected the wide reach of our work, but with so many words, the statements were challenging to recall. Through our planning workshops and with the aid of an electronic sharing board, we invited students, faculty, and staff to share key terms that best reflect the ‘heart’ of IHPME. As we look ahead to the next five years, we have more succinctly captured the collective aspirations of our IHPME community in the following single shared purpose statement:
Transforming the future of health through discovery, leadership and learning.
Strategic Priorities for 2022–2027
IHPME has identified three strategic areas of focus, including more specific objectives, for the next five years:
1 Equitable and Sustainable Health Systems
Expand knowledge of and impact on health policy and health systems locally, provincially, nationally, and globally through research, partnerships, and evaluation. Embed integrated health systems and population health as foundations for IHPME. Advance engagement and co-design to build more connected and higher quality healthcare. Help build healthier communities and be a leader in understanding the impact of environmental change on health and healthcare. Support resiliency, adaptability and sustainability in health and health systems
2Leadership Through Life-Long Learning
Develop the current and next generation of health system leaders. Life cycle and experiential learning for people at all stages of their careers. Curriculum renewal that combines competency-based training and real-world experience to prepare students for future careers. Continue advancing innovative teaching delivery – hybrid, virtual and leveraging learning analytics. Translational use of data science
3Global Reach Through Collaboration
Build our impact as a global centre and collaborate with centres around the world; expand our connections with middle- and lower-income countries and align our partnerships with our academic and research priorities. Work with international academic partners to support and build mutual capacity enhancements in research, research training and student recruitment. Discover, adapt, and evaluate leading practices locally and from other jurisdictions
Academic Priorities for 2022–2027
The following are our four priorities for research and teaching, including more specific objectives, for the next five years:
- Advance the science and practice of health research
Advance methodologies in data science, informatics, economics and evaluative sciences, clinical epidemiology, health professions education, and implementation science - Improve population health and health equity
Improve population health locally and globally through a focus on health equity, person-centred care, the individual and social determinants of health, and populations underrepresented in research - System sustainability and resiliency
Create knowledge, evidence, and information infrastructure for a sustainable and resilient health system, including health economics and finance, climate change, and health human resources - Health system transformation
Build capacity for a high-performing health system through leadership, policy, governance, quality improvement, and evaluation
Enablers
Through our planning process, in addition to identifying ‘where’ we need to go, we also explored ‘how’ we will get there. We identified two critical enablers, both of which are necessary to help deliver on our shared purpose as well as our strategic and academic priorities.
- Advancing a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion
- Create and implement an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy that addresses all areas of IHPME, including targeted supports for underrepresented staff and faculty
- Leverage key resources (EDI committee, equity-based roles, third-party support) to co-design and co-lead cultural and structural changes
- Expand data and reporting to advance a more inclusive and supportive environment for everyone who learns, works, teaches, or does research at IHPME
- Growing and strengthening the Institute
- Improve collaboration, engagement, and integration across the Institute, DLSPH and the university for all students, staff, faculty, and alumni
- Improve policies, processes and procedures for shared decision-making, collaboration and improve the effectiveness of our work
- Expand efforts to increase fundraising and other revenue
- Create a healthier Institute, with a focus on wellness for students, staff, and faculty
- Expand Senior Fellows and joint chairs
Taken as a whole, our new 2022–2027 Strategic Plan, including the shared purpose statement, strategic priorities, academic priorities, and enablers, reflects our shared aspirations and intentions to realize IHPME’s place in the future of health and healthcare.
It will take all of us working together to achieve success and make our new shared purpose ‘Transforming the future of health through discovery, leadership and learning’ possible. Together, we will set the stage for the next 75 years of our Institute.
