Seminar Series
Title
Complexity and Health Research
Speaker
Dr. Adrian Levy
Time and Date
12pm – 1pm
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Location
MS Teams : Join the meeting now
Bio
Adrian R. Levy PhD is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Health at Dalhousie University. His research focuses on improving the health of individuals and of populations. His research focuses on improving delivery of rapid access to high-quality, cost-effective and equitable health care. He is an Academic Editor at PLOS Complex Systems. He is author of over 60 peer reviewed publications and is the editor of two volumes on the Springer Handbook of Health Services Research: Comparative Effectiveness Research and Health Services Evaluation. He has been an Academic Editor for Health Research at PLOS Complex Systems since 2023.
Dr Adrian R. Levy, Ph. D., est professeur titulaire dans le département d’épidémiologie et de santé communautaire de l’Université de Dalhousie. Ses activités universitaires touchent à la recherche en services de santé. Il est l’auteur de plus de 140 publications avec comité de lecture et éditeur des manuels Springer consacrés à la recherche sur les services de la santé: Comparative Effectiveness Research et Health Services Evaluation. Il est rédacteur académique pour la recherche en santé chez PLOS Complex Systems depuis 2023.
Synopsis
Ensuring rapid access to high quality, affordable and equitable health care remains a central goal in Canada and globally. Yet, citizens of Canada and of other countries often suffer thorough suboptimal care, health authorities struggle to deliver more care with fewer resources, and governments vacillate between policies that alternatively centralize and decentralize health services. For example, the 2023 IPSOS Global Health Services Monitor survey in 31 countries documented increasing concerns along about quality, access, affordability and equity. The Economist points to the deterioration since the COVID-19 pandemic as a global “collapse in the quality of health care”. This phenomenon cuts across countries with different system structures workforce and structural capacity, different sources of remuneration and organization, different relative and absolute expenditures on health care and social spending, and different distributions of age, sex, and other demographic determinants of health.
To address these long-standing challenges, some 25 years ago, health service researchers began asserting that the new field of complexity sciences could provide solutions that meaningfully improve health outcomes. Despite these claims, in the many books and articles that have been written on the topic over the interval, no one has been able to quantitatively demonstrate how complexity works in a health care system.
In this presentation, I provide a brief introduction to complexity research alongside worked examples in different areas of health research. I conclude by speculating about fruitful directions for strengthening the field of health services research in light of complexity sciences.
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Title:
Can we improve disease-specific outcomes in multiple sclerosis by treating comorbidity?
Speaker:
Dr. Ruth Ann Marrie
Location:
MS Teams : Join the meeting now
Time and Date:
12:00-1:00 pm
Thursday, Jan 8th, 2026
Bio:
Dr. Ruth Ann Marrie is a Professor of Medicine and Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University. She received her undergraduate degree in chemistry and her medical degree from Dalhousie University, both with Distinction. She completed neurology training at McGill University. This was followed by a fellowship in Multiple Sclerosis at the Cleveland Clinic, supported by a Sylvia Lawry Physician Fellowship Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Subsequently, she obtained a PhD in Epidemiology from Case Western Reserve University. Presently, she serves as the Vice Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee for the International Progressive MS Alliance. She is the former Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee for MS Canada, former Chair of the International Advisory Committee on Clinical Trials in MS and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In 2023 she was awarded the Barancik Prize for Innovation in Multiple Sclerosis Research. Her research aims to understand the influence of comorbid diseases on a range of multiple sclerosis (MS)-related health outcomes. Other areas of research interest include etiologic factors for MS, patient-reported outcomes, and prodromal MS.
Synopsis:
Many attempts to predict outcomes in multiple sclerosis (MS) have focused on the characteristics at presentation, such as relapse localization or age at symptom onset, however these factors have only limited predicted value. Other characteristics of the individual, such as socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, genetic factors, health behaviors and comorbid conditions also influence outcomes. Physical and psychiatric comorbid conditions are common in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) from the time of MS symptom onset and increase in prevalence with age and disease duration. Depression, anxiety disorders, hypertension and hyperlipidemia are among the most prevalent conditions affecting people with MS, and are associated with adverse outcomes. This raises the question as to whether targeting comorbidities could be a novel strategy to improve MS-specific outcomes.