Impact of Giving

After completing her doctoral studies in Demography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), Dr. Anat Ziv knew she wanted to make her primary research focus the health status of the working age population. Thanks to the Purdy Crawford/Stephen Jarislowsky Postdoctural Fellow in Health Policy, she was able to do that by coming to the University of New Brunswick.

Drawing in part on data from national health surveys, Dr. Ziv is illuminating the main obstacles to health care access and identifying population groups with the highest unmet health care needs. Her research is helping provide a fuller understanding of the challenges faced by older Canadians living with chronic conditions, and how these challenges, which can lead to delays in seeking or obtaining preventive services or medical treatment, often result in a greater risk of complications from their illnesses.

Dr. Ziv is also addressing questions of how unmet needs for primary and community-based care may relate to the use of more expensive hospital services down the line. Her work indicates that hospital admissions for many chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, lung disease and heart disease can often be delayed or prevented entirely through improved access to quality primary care. Making innovative use of new linked data resources available through Statistics Canada’s Social Data Linkage Environment, Dr. Ziv is investigating these complex and increasingly crucial issues to better identify the specific factors that influence health trends over time.

Funding from the Purdy Crawford/Stephen Jarislowsky Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Policy is allowing Dr. Ziv to focus on this research and help us better understand patterns in health services utilization and access to care, as well as how this knowledge can be used to improve patient outcomes related to chronic disease prevention and management.

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