Public deliberations to inform health policy

In the latest of the HSMC at 50 Seminars, Professor Stirling Bryan discusses the case for using genomic-based approaches to allocating donor kidneys for transplantation. Stirling is Chief Scientific Officer at Michael Smith Health Research BC and Professor of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

There is growing interest in genomic information being incorporated into deceased donor kidney allocation criteria to enhance longer-term graft functioning. However, this has equity implications: the order in which candidates are offered kidneys would change, as would waiting times. Given the efficiency-equity trade-off here,  public deliberation was sought to guide Canadian policy development. There was consensus for genomic information to be added to the existing allocation criteria.

Participants requested safeguards and flexibility around implementation (e.g., mitigating declining health), public education, and regular monitoring of outcomes. This Seminar will demonstrate how public voices can be elicited and used to guide health policymakers.

Speaker Bio

Stirling Bryan is a health economist with a passion for building and supporting patient-oriented learning health systems. He is the Chief Scientific Officer at Michael Smith Health Research BC (British Columbia’s health research agency), and a professor in UBC’s School of Population & Public Health.

Before emigrating to Canada in 2008, Stirling held academic positions in the U.K. at St Thomas’ Hospital, Brunel University, and the University of Birmingham. He was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in 2005/06, spending a year at Stanford University, and in 2020 was elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.