Software Support of Population Health Intervention

Don Cowan, PhD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
and
Paulo Alencar, PhD
Research Associate Professor
School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo

October 12, 2005
12:00 Noon - 1:00 PM
Davis Centre 1304, University of Waterloo

View Video of Presentation in HI Alive Archive: Research Seminars Archive 2005-2006

Abstract
Chronic diseases (notably cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes) are the main causes of premature death and the early onset of many illnesses in Canada and globally, and thus major drivers of health care costs. These diseases are largely preventable by addressing three modifiable risk behaviours: tobacco use, inactivity, and poor eating patterns. These are prevalent behaviours, so there is a large opportunity to improve health through widespread behaviour change that affects entire populations. The new science of population-level intervention is being developed to provide the evidence-base to guide the intervention agenda. This new science needs an information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure that supports communities of practice among researchers, policy makers, and program leaders to use the evidence-base to study “natural experiments” that will clarify what innovative policies or programs work, under what conditions, and which combinations of intervention create synergy. This talk will provide an outline of the ICT infrastructure and demonstrate some of its functions.

Biosketch
Dr. Don Cowan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and Director of the Computer Systems Group, has performed research in software engineering of web-based systems for the past fifteen years. He is the author of over 200 refereed publications and is the designer of the WIDE toolkit concept which has been used to create over 20 complex operational web-based systems.

Dr. Paulo Alencar is a Research Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and a member of the Computer Systems Group. His research, teaching and consulting activities have been directed to software engineering in general and his current research interests specifically include software design, architecture, composition, evolution, software processes, Web-based and hypermedia systems, and formal methods.