Centre for Research on Inner City Health

The Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) is a research program based at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Ontario.¹⁾ CRICH conducts research to better understand the linkages between poverty, social exclusion and poor health.

CRICH operates under the umbrella of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, and is a member of the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health.²⁾

The organization is notable in the COVID-19 pandemic due to its origination of BlueDot, and its close ties to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the University of Toronto.

CRICH has partnered with a range of private and public organizations, including the AIDS Committee of Toronto, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chile Ministry of Health, China-Canada Colloquium on Modeling, Citizenship & Immigration Canada, City of Toronto, Health Canada, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), Mount Sinai Hospital, Ontario HIV Treatment Network, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, Peel Public Health, Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), SickKids, St. Michael’s Hospital, Statistics Canada, Toronto District School Board, Toronto Public Health, United Way, and WHO Kobe Centre on Health Development.³⁾

Additional research partners include Mount Allison University, Ryerson University, L’Université du Québec à Montréal, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and University of Washington.

CRICH's 2010/2011 Annual Report discloses funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BMO Financial Group, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Cancer Care Ontario, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), MacArthur Foundation, Mental Health Commission of Canada, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, Mitacs-Accelerate, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Ontario HIV Treatment Network, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, Peterborough KM Hunter Charitable Foundation, Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), RBC (Royal Bank of Canada), Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network, and the University of Toronto.

CRICH was involved in the development of BioDiaspora, a web application that “analyzes airline routes in real time to predict the international spread of infectious diseases.” The project was the precursor for BlueDot, an artificial intelligence software company that claims to have been the first to detect the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Hubei province, China.⁴⁾

At the request of Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC), CRICH worked with the World Health Organization to develop an online database of research on “Health in All Policies.” HIAP is a strategy that “makes health a priority in a range of different policy sectors. It also involves measuring the impacts of social, environmental, economic and other policies on health and health inequities.”⁵⁾

Included in its research portfolio is work related to HIV testing.