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 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.²⁾

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 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.

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