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This in-person learning event is hosted by INSPIRE-PHC in partnership with the Canadian Primary Care Research Consortium (CPCRC) and CIHR-IHSPR.

# Event Highlights

• Martin Bass Lecture: Artificial Intelligence in the service of Humanistic and Compassionate Primary Care
  • Dr. Amanda Terry, Director, Centre for Studies in Family Medicine, Western University
• Panel Discussion with Q&A: AI in Primary Care. 
  • Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya, Chair in Family Medicine Research, Women's College Hospital
  • Additional panelists to be announced
• Oral presentations
  • Abstract submission open now until September 11
• Poster presentations
  • Abstract submission open now until September 11

# Event hosts

• Dr. Rick Glazier, INSPIRE-PHC Co-Lead

• Dr. Michael Green INSPIRE-PHC Co-Lead

• Dr. Jennifer Rayner, INSPIRE-PHC Co-Lead

This learning event is hosted by Access Alliance Newcomer and Community Health, an Alliance-member CHC. 

It is time to design, validate, and evaluate an equity-focused Newcomer Health Plan (NHP) in Ontario. Join us for a community conversation to reimagine Ontario's health system for immigrants and refugees.

We envision a co-designed Newcomer Health Plan that will involve policy and program interventions, workforce (i.e. better inclusion of Internationally Educated Health Professionals) and service delivery models, and governance frameworks. It will strengthen prevention, health promotion, equity-focused outreach, and system navigation through improved access, cultural safety, accessible language, including translation, and coordinated pathways linking newcomers to health services and health-adjacent social supports. The plan will integrate trauma-informed, culturally tailored strategies and address governance and workforce barriers.

If we are successful, future newcomers arriving in Ontario will no longer face persistent barriers to healthcare access, such as language exclusion, fragmented navigation, limited culturally safe services, racism, and systemic discrimination. They will discover a welcoming and inclusive health system, built with them in mind.

# Who should attend:

You should attend if you work at the intersection of health, settlement, equity, and inclusion. This is a working session. You will be participating in active discussions to help shape ideas and discuss how best to co-create a Newcomer Health Plan with health, settlement, community, and newcomers themselves.  The goal is to embed the NHP into Ontario’s health system. System transformation; not new research, or a new program. What role might you or your organization play in moving this forward? What do you need to be able to contribute?

Find out more about our ideas and the full session agenda at https://accessalliance.ca/research-blog/a-newcomer-health-plan-for-ontario-the-time-is-right/#NHPevent and join us on April 29th!

This webinar is presented by the Substance Use Health Network (SUHN) as part of their Research Spotlight series.

# MySafe Final Evaluation Report: Impacts of Program Closure

Join us for a critical and timely conversation on the independent evaluation of the MySafe biometric medication dispensing program - and what its closure reveals about the current direction of drug policy in Canada.

At its core, this is not just a story about one program. It raises urgent questions about what it means to pilot high-impact interventions for populations at extreme risk - and then withdraw them without continuity, safeguards, or accountability. As harm reduction services are scaled back or shut down across jurisdictions, the findings point to a growing gap between evidence, ethics, and policy.

# In this webinar, we will:

• Share key findings from the evaluation

• Examine the real-world impacts of program withdrawal on people’s lives

• Situate MySafe within a broader landscape of shifting drug policy and restricted access to prescribed alternatives

• Interrogate the ethical implications of short-term pilots without continuity-of-care protections

• Discuss what accountability, responsibility, and evidence-informed policy should look like moving forward

For healthcare and social service providers, researchers, policy-makers, and people with lived and living experience, this session offers space to grapple with a difficult but necessary question: what do we owe people when we introduce - and then remove - interventions that shape their survival?

# About MySafe

MySafe was a low-barrier, person-centred model that provided secure, flexible access to prescribed alternatives through biometric dispensing machines, paired with wraparound supports. Participants described improved stability, autonomy, and engagement in care. In 2024, the program was abruptly defunded amid shifting political and regulatory pressures on prescribed alternatives, leaving many people without safe, reliable access to care.

This evaluation, based on in-depth interviews with former clients and service providers, documents not only what worked but what happened when it was taken away. Participants describe rapid destabilization, loss of autonomy, and forced transitions into more restrictive or inaccessible systems of care. These are not abstract policy shifts; they are decisions with immediate, material consequences for people’s health, safety, and survival.

# Speakers

• Tara Taylor, SpenceCreo Founation

• Isabelle Boisvert, Changemark

• Kaitlin Calligiari, Changemark  

This webinar is presented by the Audit & Feedback MetaLab at Women's College Hospital  This session is the second of an ongoing webinar series designed to bring together researchers and health system partners to review evidence, share real-world Canadian examples, and collaboratively identify future research and implementation priorities.

# Webinar Overview

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent and growing health threat, fueled in part by the overuse and inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics. Audit and feedback approaches, particularly those that include peer comparison, have been shown to improve prescribing practices among clinicians. Ensuring these approaches are designed and implemented with equity in mind is important for supporting appropriate antibiotic use across diverse health care settings.

In this interactive, 60-minute webinar, Dr. Noah Ivers will open with key findings from his audit and feedback Cochrane review. Dr. Kevin Schwartz will then discuss the evidence base for antibiotic prescribing feedback and highlight the CANBuild-AMR project, which aims to scale and optimize audit and feedback programs across Canada to improve antibiotic use. Jonathan Lam will provide a brief overview of Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC) and lead a facilitated discussion exploring opportunities to spread and scale effective audit and feedback initiatives, equity considerations in implementation, and future directions for research and practice.