About

The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing (CERC) program is a transformative research initiative that employs an engaged community partnership approach to expand our understanding, practice, and delivery of health outcomes for all members of our communities.

The CERC in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing is led by professor Karen Soldatic. Collaborating closely with a network of health-care institutions, service providers, and civil society organizations, the program aims for a paradigm shift – one that challenges a siloed, expert-driven approach to health and well-being and moves instead towards a community-engaged, preventative model of well-being.

Uniquely applying a critical disability lens, the research program aims to not only reduce health disparities that are inextricable from their social contexts, but to embed community knowledge into health-care institutions, systems and models of delivery.

The CERC program is known worldwide as one of the most prestigious of its kind. This $8-million, eight-year program is funded by the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat on behalf of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).