About the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences
The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences brings together Canada’s top-ranked health and biomedical scientists and scholars to make a positive impact on the urgent health concerns of Canadians.
These Fellows, drawn from all disciplines across our nation’s universities, healthcare and research institutes, evaluate Canada’s most complex health challenges and recommend strategic, actionable solutions.
Until the 21st century, the societies of top-ranked academics in Canada played a very limited role in providing expert advice to Canadians. In 2004, the Federal Government committed to creating a national alliance of academic societies. The purpose was to establish a process whereby experts from all disciplines including science, arts and humanities, engineering, health and biomedical sciences could provide timely, evidence-based analysis to inform public policy development. With the establishment of the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), a key member representing the health and biomedical sciences emerged from the former Canadian Institute of Academic Medicine.
This new organization, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS), was fashioned after the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine) in the USA, to provide independent, objective, evidence-based analyses of health challenges that inform both public and private sectors in decision-making about policy, practice and investment.