Dr. Mark J. Dobrow is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He is also the Managing Director of the Accessing Centre for Expertise (ACE), which aims to make it easier for health system stakeholders to access academic health experts. He has held a number of roles that bridge health systems/policy research and leadership for both national and provincial health care agencies, including the Health Council of Canada, Health Quality Ontario, and Cancer Care Ontario. Dr. Dobrow was also the inaugural Executive Director of Converge3 – a policy research centre based at the University of Toronto that leveraged province-wide research expertise to provide evidence-informed guidance to health system stakeholders, including the Ontario Ministry of Health.
Dr. Dobrow’s primary research interests focus on making connections between researchers and decision-makers more effective and efficient to support better use of evidence for practice and policy. Cancer systems and particularly cancer screening policy are key areas of interest. Dr. Dobrow has led several studies that examine the impact of context on population-based screening decisions, including a project that consolidated 50 years of evolving approaches for guiding screening decisions into a new set of decision principles for screening.
Dr. Dobrow is an experienced qualitative researcher and has taught courses on case study research and non-traditional evidence synthesis methods. Dr. Dobrow has a PhD in health services and policy research from the University of Toronto, an MSc in epidemiology from the University of Edinburgh and a BComm in health care administration from the University of Saskatchewan. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and was a Harkness fellow in The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice.
Tazneen Tamanna Mahmud
MSc Graduate Student
Thesis: A meta-narrative review on the concept of Learning Health Systems with a focus on the Indigenous ways of knowing
Supervisors: Mark J Dobrow
Brandon Maser
PhD Graduate Student
Thesis: Understanding How Policies, Politics, and Social Contexts Influence Access to Opioid Medicines in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Supervisors: Mark J Dobrow, Avram Ezra Denburg