TABLE 4.

Breadth and depth of knowledge related to health and healthcare systems

Disciplinary depth Possess detailed knowledge and skills from a specific discipline or field related to health services and policy research (e.g., epidemiology, medicine, nursing, sociology, economics, political science or management)

Health systems Able to describe the main features of the Canadian healthcare system and to place the Canadian system in a comparative international context

Determinants of health Able to define and work with concepts of health and identify the relative importance of broad determinants of health at the individual, group, community and population level

Health research methods Able to explain how health and disease are measured and how relationships between determinants (e.g., environmental, behavioural or treatment) and health are established

Health economic theory Able to explain how health and healthcare differ from ordinary unique economic goods and describe core concepts in health economics (e.g., cost-effectiveness, health insurance, moral hazard, etc.)

Evaluation Able to identify appropriate ways in which health services can be evaluated using tools of program evaluation, health technology assessment and/or health economics

Organizational theory Able to describe a variety of theories concerning how people interact within and between organizations and to place such theories in the context of healthcare systems