CURA Secretariat

The CURA Secretariat is the executive body that is responsible for the day to day oversight of the research project and coordinating and facilitating the work of the four policy area teams.

Scope of Research:

While the Secretariat's function is primarily administrative, from time to time the Secretariat will engage in research projects on broader scale disability policy analysis or other areas that will support the work of the four policy teams. These projects will be conducted primarily with the help of student researchers or by participating in initiatives with other CURA partners.

Current Research

Tools for Change

The next step in our application of the PDSA methodology for our work will be to study the work of prominent disability policy researchers and public administration scholars to discover best practices in attempting to influence policy-makers toward more equitable and inclusive policies for people with disabilities. This project will result in the publication of a Toolkit for Disability Policy Change, and manuscripts for publication in scholarly journals.

Whatever Happened to the Canadian Disability Act?

Various efforts have been made over the years to gather consensus around the idea that Canada needs a national disability act similar to the United States or the UK. In the 2005 Conservative party platform, Stephen Harper mentioned that creating a national disability act was one of the changes he would make if elected Prime Minister. Once elected, Prime Minister Harper stated that this was still his intention in 2007, in a speech called his Agenda for a Stronger, Safer, Better Canada. In 2008 the Minster of HRSDC said that they were still looking into such a bill and would soon be engaging in stakeholder discussions about what a proposal for this Act would look like. This project will investigate why a Canadians With Disabilities Act seems to have dropped off the legislative agenda, what the policy proposals being developed for this act looked like, and what barriers currently exist for implementing such an act in Canada.

Open Hand PDSA - Accessible Examining Tables in Primary Care

The "open hand" PDSA was a project that served three objectives. The first was to provide an opportunity for members to see how the PDSA methodology would work in practice in the disability policy field so they could apply it in their own research area. A secondary goal was to raise awareness of the difficulty that people with disabilities have in accessing the same quality of health services as their able bodied contemporaries with policy-makers and primary care physicians. A third objective was to increase access to better care by advocating for more accessible examining tables within Family Health Teams in Ontario.
To read more about this project click here

Increasing Accessibility in Primary Care in Ontario

As a continuation of the "open hand" PDSA on accessible examining tables, the Secretariat developed a Primary Care Accessibility Checklist with the help of other CURA partners. This checklist anticipates the requirements of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act coming into force for all private sector facilities in 2012, and includes measures for determining whether a primary care practice is accessible for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. The checklist was distributed through one of our community partner agencies to all Family Health Teams in Ontario as a resource to family physicians. To download a copy of the checklist to see if your own practice is accessible click here.

For more details about the research plans of this team, please see the CDPA Five Year Program of Research document on the research page.

Completed Research

To view completed research of the CDPA, that is currently available, please click here

Members:

The Secretariat Team consists of:

William Adair (Community Co-Chair)

Executive Director of the Canadian Paraplegic Association Ontario since 1993, William Adair offers a depth of provincial and national experience in the spinal cord rehabilitation field. As a former Ontario government employee, national task force leader and Director of the National Patient Services Program with the Canadian Cancer Society, he brings to the Foundation nearly three decades of expertise in non-profit management and strategic leadership.

Dr. Mary Ann McColl (Academic Co-Chair)

Dr. McColl is the Associate Director of Research at the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research and is also a Professor in the School of Rehabilitation Therapy and the Dept. Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen's University. She has been a leader in the disability studies field for many years, during which time she conducted a ten-year series of research projects on enhancing primary care for people with mobility disabilities. Dr. McColl has also held the positions of the Director of the School of Rehabilitation Therapy at Queen's University and Director of Research at the Lyndhurst Spinal Cord Centre in Toronto.

Jackie Dickenson (Administrative and Research Assistant)

Jackie Dickenson has a background in health care service and administration, has coordinated projects for the Ontario Rehabilitation Research Advisory Network (ORRAN), and has collaborated with Dr. Mary Ann McColl in the preparation of a new book on Rehabilitation in Primary Health Care. Jackie offers part-time administrative assistance to the CURA project.

Mike Schaub (Project Coordinator)

Mike Schaub is a Research Associate with the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research. He holds a Master's degree in Public Administration with a focus in health policy, has coordinated previous research studies on rehabilitation within primary health care, and disability policy at Queen's. Mike is the research coordinator for this project.

Next: Citizenship Team