Job Title: Adjunct Faculty, University of Victoria; President and CEO, Healthcare Excellence Canada
Bio: Jennifer Zelmer, a 2002-03 Canadian Associate of the Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellowships in Health Care Policy and Practice, is a director of special projects at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). She initiated and now oversees an integrated program of analytical activities, including leading teams responsible for developing CIHI's annual report on health care in Canada. She is also leading a corporate data quality strategies study. Prior to joining the institute, she worked with a variety of health, academic, and governmental organizations in Canada, Australia, Denmark, and India, among other countries. She is currently completing a doctoral thesis at McMaster University, focusing on the economic burden of chronic illnesses. Zelmer is also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Toronto, a research associate with the Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population at McMaster University, and a member of a number of health-related boards and advisory committees.
Project: The Use of Health System Performance Data to Make International Comparisons
Description: Zelmer investigated short- and long-term opportunities for more systematic and sophisticated approaches to making cross-national health system comparisons in order to inform the policy debate. She used population-based survey data in Canada, Australia, and the U.S. to examine the impacts of health care policies such as universal coverage on health care disparities across both time and countries.