A reflection by Sue Delanoy.
Sue Delanoy is the former Executive Director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan.
SPHERU has been transformative in my work and community, and continues to be today.
Working with SPHERU meant access to research and data on the issues we were working with directly in the community.
All of a sudden, these issues you have been talking about for 10 or 15 years are getting some notoriety, because you have data to back it up. With the research comes that integrity. I mean, how often do you actually get to prove a point?
Research can help to turn up the volume on the work being done, and suddenly you have an opportunity to affect policy or change policy for the better health of our community.
Another benefit of working with SPHERU as a partner was the cross-pollination of understanding of different issues.
This was very, very powerful. Not that I didn’t understand, for example food security or the importance of co-ops, but I learned a lot more through working with SPHERU, and about how the pieces fit together. The growth and the learning that happened with my work with SPHERU most definitely made me a better leader and a better person.
Learn more about SPHERU’s Intervention research.
While much population health research focuses on describing health inequities, SPHERU’s focus is on population health intervention research: we look at how to address inequities by taking action on the social determinants of health. By intervention, we mean any developments or changes to policies, programs, research, funding, or any other action that influences the determinants of health and positively affect population health outcomes.