Canada's Health Researcher of the Year in Health Services and Systems and Population Health Research – 2009

Dr. Michael H. Boyle
PhD
Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences and
Offord Centre for Child Studies
McMaster University

We're not all born with the same opportunities in life. But Dr. Michael Boyle's ultimate goal, through research, is to make these opportunities at birth more equal for all children.

Dr. Boyle began his career working for the Catholic Children's Aid Society in Toronto. This early experience had a lasting impact: while he found the work engaging, he saw a need to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of services offered to children in need.

In the early 1980s, he and the late Dr. Dan Offord began working on the Ontario Child Health Study, the first large-scale observational study of children in their family environments. This landmark project raised concerns about the unmet mental health needs of our children and about the many ways that living environments can adversely affect a child's mental health. The results of the study helped prompt the federal government to establish the first Child Development Initiative in the 1990s, which attempted to strengthen opportunities for development among children living in disadvantaged circumstances.

In recent years, Dr. Boyle and his research team have been studying survey data collected from thousands of families in the developing world. He is also working to improve longitudinal study design and sampling techniques, so that researchers can draw more meaningful conclusions from their study results.

Dr. Boyle is a researcher and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. He has an MSc from McMaster University and an MSW and PhD from the University of Toronto. He is the Canada Research Chair in the Social Determinants of Child Health at McMaster University.

Canada's Health Researcher of the Year Award in Health Services and Systems and Population Health Research honours researchers who have demonstrated excellence in their field. This prestigious award recognizes innovation, creativity, leadership and dedication to health research, providing world-class researchers with funding to pursue critical research and to support and mentor trainees.

Presenter Dr. Michael Kramer (left) and Dr. Michael H. Boyle, awardee (right).

Dr. Michael H. Boyle (right) accepts Canada’s Health Researcher of the Year Award in Health Services and Systems and Population Health Research.