Funding, News and Announcements

Dear colleagues,

I am reaching out to you today to introduce myself and to share some exciting news with you.

My name is Steven Hoffman, and I’m the new Scientific Director of the Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the only social scientist leading a CIHR institute. Since my term as Scientific Director began this past summer, I’ve travelled to a number of cities as part of a cross-country Listening Tour. One of the findings is that some social scientists working in population and public health have not always seen themselves reflected in CIHR’s funding opportunities.

To that end, I’m pleased to inform you that we have a new funding opportunity geared towards social scientists who are conducting research focused on addressing the broad spectrum of population and public health issues. I’m especially excited about this opportunity because this is the first time that CIHR has announced a funding opportunity specifically targeting social scientists who are based in social science departments. This funding marks an important step in the process of bringing researchers across disciplines together with those trained in public health to confront the social and structural factors that shape health and health equity, and related cultural, economic, legal, political and regulatory environments.

Specifically, we are funding “population health planning grants” designed to support social scientists who have never previously been the Nominated Principal Investigator of a CIHR Foundation Grant or Project Grant to develop competitive applications for CIHR’s bigger funding opportunities. Please review the funding opportunity for full eligibility details.

With these grants, I’m excited to be trying something new and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best,
Steven

Steven J. Hoffman JD PhD LLD
Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Population & Public Health
Director, Global Strategy Lab, and
Associate Professor of Law, University of Ottawa