Catalyst Seminar Series - January 2026

Join us for Catalyst Series, a dynamic seminar series showcasing groundbreaking research funded by the Institute of Health Emergencies and Pandemics' (IHEP) Catalyst and Research Development Grants. Since 2023, IHEP has provided over $1 million to research teams at the University of Toronto, to support collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects. These presentations spotlight the innovative work of interdisciplinary teams tackling urgent challenges in pandemic preparedness, response, and recovery.

From data-driven public health strategies to community-based interventions and novel biomedical approaches, each session will feature compelling insights from researchers whose projects are shaping the future of public health resilience.

What to Expect

• Engaging presentations from Phase 1 and Phase 2 Catalyst Grant recipients
• Opportunities to connect with leading experts across disciplines
• Discussions on real-world impact and future directions

Projects Highlighted

Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Communities Made Vulnerable by Social and Economic Conditions and the Subsequent Policy Response in Canada

• Presenter: Andrew Pinto (St. Michael’s Hospital)
• Reports quickly emerged in spring 2020 that COVID-19 was disproportionately impacting communities made vulnerable by social and economic policies. In the early phase of the pandemic, we conducted a rapid review of the international literature on the social determinants of COVID-19 infection, published between December 1, 2019 – June 25, 2020. We found strong associations between race or ethnicity, socioeconomic deprivation, occupation and other social determinants and COVID-19 incidence and hospitalizations. In response to this and other evidence, members of our study team also developed robust guidelines for Canadian policymakers on how to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on these communities. Since the review and guidelines were published, a large number of additional reports and studies were published on how the pandemic impacted racialized, low-income and non-healthcare workers who could not shelter at home. However, no study created a detailed picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these communities in Canada. And no research has been conducted on whether Canadian jurisdictions implemented policies to support equitable recover. The products of this research will help create a foundation for future research on interventions to improve pandemic preparedness in a way that engages communities made vulnerable by social and economic policies.

Leveraging Data Science to Improve Vaccine Equity and Pandemic Preparedness Among Children Who are Newcomers to Canada

• Presenter: Shaun Morris (The Hospital for Sick Children)
• Immunization is one of the most important tools to support healthy childhood, benefiting both individuals and populations. Pandemic preparedness requires understanding of whose immunizations are complete and whose have gaps. Vaccine records for the many migrants that Canada receives each year may be in other languages, scripts, and formats, making their translation and interpretation more challenging and time-consuming than most providers and public health units can handle. The resulting immunization documentation delays posed by translation and interpretation challenges introduce infectious disease-related risks to individuals and populations both during, and between, pandemics and can prevent children’s access to school in Ontario due to provincial legislation. As a result, many newcomer families that are already at elevated risk of vaccine-preventable diseases experience delays in updating their children’s routine vaccines, entering school, and integrating into their new communities, thus exacerbating inequity, and limiting pandemic readiness. This presentation will describe the early steps to develop a data science driven tool to better address the issue of challenges in translating international vaccination records.