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.


Affiliations

Team

Name Position Years
Patricia O'Campo Director 2010-2011

Partners

Funding

BioDiaspora

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)


Research

"Health in All Policies"

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)

HIV

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

1)
Brown, J. Centre for Research on Inner City Health - St. Michael’s Hospital. Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy. Retrieved February 24, 2022, from https://archive.ph/NOzKb
2)
Centre for Research on Inner City Health. National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. Retrieved February 24, 2022, from https://archive.ph/G3wjZ
3) , 5)
Impact Report 2010/2011. (2011). Centre for Research on Inner City Health; St. Michael’s Hospital. https://web.archive.org/web/20130721142723/http://www.stmichaelshospital.com:80/pdf/crich/crich-impact-report-2010-11.pdf
4)
Niiler, E. (2020, January 25). An AI Epidemiologist Sent the First Warnings of the Wuhan Virus. Wired. https://archive.ph/EAiP4
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