Health Services Systems and Policy Research Seminar Series

The HSSPR seminar series is offered annually, with themes varying each year.

These seminars will be held online via Zoom. Zoom links will be sent upon registration on EventBrite. This is an open seminar where everyone within the broad University of Toronto community, and within the networks of University of Toronto community members, are welcome to attend.

The contexts within which we work and live can exert profound influences on our health and well-being; they can affect our perceptions, our interactions with others, our experiences, our behaviours, and our general functioning and performance. Environments in which long-term care is provided to older Canadians, including nursing homes, are places in which individuals both work and live – where care providers work to sustain older Canadians’ quality of life, and the care of older Canadians who live in these environments is the focus of work. The quality of care and life of nursing home residents has been a focus for researchers for decades, and the quality of work life of care workers and workforce sustainability in long-term care has been identified more recently as a global issue. This seminar series focuses on examining what we know about the influences of work environments on workers providing care in nursing homes, and on the residents who are the recipients of their care.  We consider the influences of two facets of nursing home environments, psychosocial and physical-built, which have historically been the focus of disparate disconnected disciplines. Psychosocial features include perceived organizational support, perceived supervisor support, social connectedness, and work affect while physical-built features include workspace configurations and navigability, ventilation, and lighting. We contend that there are important interactions amongst features of the psychosocial and physical-built environments that influence both worker and resident outcomes.  Contributors to this year’s seminar series derive from a variety of disciplines including gerontology, health services research, architecture, building design, industrial design, environmental psychology, and work and organizational psychology.

Impacts of Nursing Home Environments on Older Adults: Fall 2023 seminars (1 to 4) will focus on the impacts of nursing home environments on older adults, relating to the influences of the physical (built and naturalized) and psychosocial environments on older adult health and quality of life in aging environments.

Impacts of Nursing Home Work Environments on Workers: Winter 2024 seminars (5 to 8) will focus on the impacts of nursing home work environments on workers, relating to the influences of the physical (built and naturalized) and/or psychosocial work environments on quality of work-life, health, mental health, and well-being.

Many of the presenters will also consider one or more of the following themes:

  • Building Supportive Systems— the necessary actions to realize possible improved futures for work and life, for older adults and care providers, in aging environments.
  • Health Human Resources—the factors impacting the management and organization of care providers (‘health human resources’) in aging environments.
  • Balancing Environmental Imperatives—the challenges of balancing the imperatives of ‘salutogenesis’ (health-promoting features) and ‘pathogenesis’ (disease-causing features) in aging environments.

  1. Developing Supportive Physical Environments for People Living with Dementia in Long-Term Care Settings
    October 18th, 2023, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Habib Chaudhury, PhD | Chair and Professor in the Department of Gerontology at the Simon Fraser University
    Recording: Developing Supportive Physical Environments…
  2. Between a Rock and a Hard place – Designing Homes for Older Adults
    November 22nd, 2023, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Rotem Yaniv, MArch | Project Architect at Murphy Partners Senior Housing Architects
    Recording: Between a Rock and a Hard place – Designing Homes for Older Adults
  3. Surfacing the Need and Concepts for Alternative Design in Long Term Care
    December 20th, 2023, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Chantal Trudel, BA, BID, MSc | Associate Professor, School of Industrial Design at the Carleton University
  4. Green Care Farm
    January 10th, 2024, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Rebekah Churchyard, MSW | CEO, Founder of Green Care Farms Inc.
  5. Civility Matters: Workplace Incivility and Bullying among Staff in Long-Term Care
    February 7th, 2024, 3:30-5:00pm EST
    Heather Cooke, PhD | Manager, Research and Knowledge Mobilization for the Alzheimer Society of B.C.
    Recording: Civility Matters (part 1), Civility Matters – Panel Discussion (part 2)
  6. Involving Older Adults Actively in Research and Improvement in Care Systems
    February 21st, 2024, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Anne Killett, PhD | Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy, Director of Research in the School of Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia
    Recording: Involving Older Adults Actively in Research and Improvement in Care Systems
  7. Creating Healthy Work Environments in Long-term Care: A Holistic Approach to Applying Evidence based Design
    March 6th, 2024, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Terri Zborowsky, PhD | Evidence-based design researcher at HGA
  8. Impact of Shared Residential Care Settings on Older Adults
    March 20th, 2024, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Margaret Calkins, PhD | President of I.D.E.A.S. Inc.
  9. Designing for Older Adults in Healthcare: A Perspective on the Place of Care and the Work Place
    April 10th, 2024, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Cliff Harvey | Joint Vice President, Redevelopment, Grand River Hospital
  10. Promoting the Health of Workers and Older Adults in Long-Term Care Homes With Access to Nature
    April 24th, 2024, 4:00-5:30pm EST
    Peggy Chi, PhD, MLA, CSLA, OALA | Landscape architect and Postdoctoral Fellow at IHPME

Contact Us

Series Coordinator:
Peggy Chi  PhD MLA B.Arch.Sci. OALA CSLA
Postdoctoral Fellow | Landscape Architect
email: peggy.chi@mail.utoronto.ca

Organization:
Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
University of Toronto
155 College Street, Suite 425
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 3M6


Series Facilitators:
Whitney B. Berta  PhD MBA BSc
Professor, Organization & Management Studies
email: whit.berta@utoronto.ca

Sarah Hunter M.Arch B.A.S.
PhD Student, Health Services Research, Organization & Management Studies
email: sc.hunter@mail.utoronto.ca


Past Seminar Series

Listen to recordings or review the abstracts of past seminars.

  1. Salutogenic Built Environments for Health
    October 18, 2022
    Stephen Verderber, Arch,D., NCARB, ACSA Distinguished Professor, University of Toronto
  2. English Care Homes and Sense of ‘Home’: The Winding Road
    November 30, 2022
    Anne Killett, Senior Lecturer, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of East Anglia
  3. Driving Sustainable Development Transformations with Emotional Leadership
    December 14, 2022
    Neal M. Ashkanasy OAM, PhD, Professor of Management, Business School, The University of Queensland
  4. Finding Our Path Forward: The Healthcare Workers Post Pandemic Journey Back to Purpose
    January 18, 2023
    Jim Kinsey, Vice President of Engagement Strategies at Planetree International
  5. Assessing Preferences and Perceived Restorative Qualities of Break Spaces for Nurses in China Purpose
    February 15, 2023
    Xiaoyi Zhu, MS, BArch
  6. Healthy Offices: Exploring the Salutogenic Approach in the Context of Office Design
    March 1, 2023
    Melina Forooraghi

  1. Generational Diversity
    October 7, 2021 
    Dr. Cort Rudolph, Saint Louis University.
    Recording: Generations and Generational Differences at Work: Where do we Stand?
  2. Discrimination and Audience Evaluations
    October 21, 2021
    Dr. Bryan Stroube, London Business School.
    Recording: Status and Consensus: Heterogeneity in Audience Evaluations of Female Lead Films
  3. Stigma and the Stigmatization Process in Organizations
    November 4, 2021
    Dr. Brent Lyons, York University.
    Recording: Stigma and the stigmatization process in organizations
  4. Gender Diversity
    November 18, 2021
    Dr. Ivona Hideg, York University.
    Recording: Gender diversity
  5. The Value of Women’s Health Work
    March 3, 2022
    Dr. Beverley Essue, DLSPH, University of Toronto
  6. Racial Codeswitching
    March 10, 2022 (cancelled)
    Dr. Courtney McCluney, Cornell University
  7. Racial Codeswitching
    March 10, 2022 (cancelled)
    Dr. Courtney McCluney, Cornell University

  1. Organizational Science and Health Care
    October 6, 2020
    Christopher Myers, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School,
  2. Professional Identity
    October 27, 2020
    Dr. Julia DiBenigno, Yale University
  3. Leadership
    November 10, 2020
    Dr. Sara Singer, Stanford University
  4. Sensemaking
    November 24, 2020
    Dr. Marlys Christianson, University of Toronto
  5. Institutional Change
    December 1, 2020
    Dr. Nigam Amit, Cass University London (UK)
  6. Groups and Teams
    December 8, 2020
    Dr. Michaela Kerrissey, Harvard School of Public Health
  7. Conflict
    December 15, 2020
    Dr. Ariel Avgar, Cornell University
  8. Social Networks
    January 26, 2021
    Dr. Jerry Kim, Rutgers University
  9. Innovation
    February 9, 2021
    Dr. Timothy Hoff, Northeastern University
  10. Organizational Learning
    February 23, 2021
    Dr. Ingrid Nembhard, University of Pennsylvania
  11. High Reliability Organizations
    March 9, 2021
    Dr. Timothy Vogus, Vanderbilt University
  12. Shared Mental Models
    March 23, 2021
    Dr. Jenna Evans, McMaster
  13. Moral Behavior
    March 30, 2021
    Dr. Meena Andiappan, University of Toronto IHPME
  14. Strategic alliances/Organizational Design
    April 6, 2021
    Dr. Thomas D’Aunno, New York University

  1. An Introduction to Dissemination & Implementation Science
    October 29, 2019
    Dr. Melanie Barwick, Hospital for Sick Children & Dr. Katie Dainty North York General Hospital
  2. Implementation Research: Why and How it Matters to Global Health
    November 21, 2019
    Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Dalla Lana School of Public Health & Dr. Halla Thorsteinsdóttir, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
  3. A Network Perspective of D & I
    December 11, 2019
    Dr. Reza Yousefi-Nooraie, University of Rochester
  4. The History & Evolution of Dissemination & Implementation Science
    January 29, 2020
    Dr. James Dearing, Michigan State University
  5. Conceptualizing Sustainability as a Dynamic, Iterative Process
    February 5, 2020
    Dr. David Chambers, National Cancer Institute
  6. Research Approaches, Methods & Methodological Challenges in Implementation Science
    February 19, 2020
    Dr. Monika Kastner, North York General Hospital
  7. Applied Implementation Science: Where Theory Meets Practice
    February 25, 2020
    Dr. Melanie Barwick, Hospital for Sick Children
  8. Perspectives, Theories & Frameworks Used in DIS
    March 3, 2020
    Dr. Melanie Barwick, Hospital for Sick Children
  9. De-Implementation & Other Thorny Issues
    March 11, 2020
    Dr. Karen Born, St. Michael’s Hospital
  10. Implementation Science and Complexity Science at a Crossroads: Learning Systems for Advancing Community Health
    April 28,2020
    Peter S. Hovmand, Brown School’s Social System Design Lab, Washington University
  11. Scale Up & Scale Out: Similarities, Differences and Methods
    May 21, 2020
    Dr. Monika Kastner, North York General Hospital and Dr. Halla Thorsteinsdóttir, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

  1. AI in Healthcare: Promises and Challenges
    October 30, 2018
    Paul Sulkers, Former National Healthcare Executive with IBM and Adjunct Lecturer at IHPME
  2. Learning “Healthy” Models for Healthcare
    November 27, 2018
    Marzyeh Ghassemi, Assistant Professor, Faculties of Computer Science & Medicine, University of Toronto Faculty Member, Vector Institute
  3. Perspectives on Ethics in AI for Health
    January 22, 2019
    Jennifer Gibson, Director Joint Centre for Bioethics and Jay Shaw Assistant Professor, IHPME & Scientist Health Systems Solutions & Virtual Care, Women’s College Hospital
  4. Machine Learning in Health: The Future of Saving Lives
    March 12, 2019
    Elham Dolatabadi, PhD Vector Institute
  5. Learning to Adapt and Care Compassionately in the World of Data and Artificial Intelligence
    April 2, 2019
    David Wiljer, UHN & IHPME

  1. Applied Network Approaches to Diffusion of Health Innovations
    November 8, 2017
    James Dearing, Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Communication, Michigan State University
  2. Multilevel Perspectives on the Diffusion of Health Care Best Practices
    December 6, 2017
    Amanda M. Beacom, Visiting Scholar at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College
  3. Measuring and Influencing Community, Patient and Public Engagement Through Social Network Analysis
    February 21, 2018
    Jon Salsberg, Senior Lecturer Primary Health Care Research, Public and Patient Involvement, University of Limerick
  4. Examining Network Evolution in Health and Human Services: The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Naturalistic Study Designs
    March 21, 2018
    Alicia Bunger, Associate Professor, College of Social Work, Ohio State University
  5. Systems Science Methods in Public Health: Dynamics, Networks, and Agents
    March 23, 2018
    Douglas Luke, Professor and Director of the Centre for Public Health Systems Science (CPHSS), The Brown School