¶ Adalsteinn Brown
Adalsteinn Davidson "Steini" Brown is a Canadian public health researcher based in Toronto, Ontario.
He is the Dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Founding Director of the Institute for Pandemics,[1] a Senior Fellow at Massey College, and former Co-chair of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Ontario Health,[2] as a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute,[3] and a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Rossy Cancer Network.[4]
His other former positions include Director of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), Director of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research,[4:1] head of strategy and assistant to the Deputy Minister for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care,[5], head of policy and science for the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, an Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Instructor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario.[6]
¶ History
Brown grew up in London, Ontario.
He received his undergraduate degree in government from Harvard University and his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
He moved to New York in 1996 to co-found a healthcare consulting firm with offices on Park Avenue.[7]
Brown returned to Ontario in 1998 to join the Hospital Report Project, where he completed reports until 2001.[8] In his 2001 profile, Brown lists his research interests to include “the cost-effectiveness of emerging technologies and the effective communication of performance information to consumers.” He states that he had “worked with a wide range of private sector clients in Canada, the U.S., and the Far East on strategy in health care, health care financing, and quality improvement topics.”
Brown served as an Adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).[6:1]
In 2003, Brown was named one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 for his work on healthcare performance, selected by a panel of 29 business and community leaders assembled by Caldwell Partners International, an executive search firm in Canada. Brown was 32 years old at the time.[7:1]
Brown served on the Premier’s Council on Improving Healthcare and Ending Hallway Medicine, created in 2018 to “provide the Premier of Ontario and the Deputy Premier and Minister of Health and Long-Term Care with strategic priorities and actions.”[9] He was on the team that authored a report determining that Ontario's hospital system was already under strain well before COVID-19 or the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. Canuck Law notes, “Even back in 2018, 2019, the Premier’s Council openly admitted that the Ontario Health Care system was overburdened, and was unable to meet current needs, let alone projected increases. Adalsteinn Brown is on that Council. When he headed up [the] Ontario Science Table the following year, did he simply forget his own report?”[10]
On December 5, 2018, Brown published a research article titled Public health emergency preparedness: a framework to promote resilience. His co-authors included Yasmin Khan, Tracey O’Sullivan, Shannon Tracey, Jennifer Gibson, Mélissa Généreux, Bonnie Henry, and Brian Schwartz.[11]
In his University of Toronto financial disclosures for 2018-2019 and his OST forms, Brown reports receiving $25,000.00 from CorHealth Ontario for “consulting on information management requirements.”[3:1][12]
¶ COVID-19
Starting in July 2020, Brown acted as co-chair of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table alongside Brian Schwartz.[13] He also participated in the table's Behavioural Science Working Group.[14]
In August 2020, Brown became the founding Director of the new Institute for Pandemics at the University of Toronto, which he said will "ramp up research and training for more agile, equitable preparation, resilience and recovery from pandemics."[15]
Brown was paid by Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) as a member on their COVID-19 Expert Committee.[12:1]
In mid-December 2021, Brown stated that “an accelerated booster campaign doesn't go far enough to keep the hospital system from becoming overwhelmed” by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. He contradicted himself multiple times when attempting to claim the COVID-19 vaccine “booster shots” were effective, while also claiming two doses also offered protection. He also advised that families should only “associate with” people who are vaccinated.[16]
However, as noted by Canuck Law, “all of these measures to 'prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed' [are] based on false pretenses, since Brown’s recent work shows he ALREADY KNEW there was a capacity problem in Ontario hospitals.”[10:1]
On August 3, 2022, Brown stepped down as co-chair of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table to focus on his work as Dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Upton Allen took his place.[17]
¶ Publications
- February 20, 2017: Evaluating investment in quality improvement capacity building: a systematic review
- March 11, 2018: Development of Enriched Core Competencies for Health Services and Policy Research
- December 5, 2018: Public health emergency preparedness: a framework to promote resilience
¶ External links
Who we are. Institute for Pandemics. Retrieved June 18, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230618164915/https://pandemics.utoronto.ca/who-we-are/ ↩︎
Board of Directors. Ontario Health. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230406174256/https://www.ontariohealth.ca/about-us/our-people/board-directors ↩︎
Adalsteinn Steini Brown | Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Dalla Lana School of Public Health; University of Toronto. Retrieved January 22, 2022, from http://archive.today/2021.01.13-000338/http://ihpme.utoronto.ca/faculty/adalsteinn-steini-brown/ ↩︎ ↩︎
Adalsteinn Brown. Rossy Cancer Network. Retrieved July 11, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20230711173821/https://www.mcgill.ca/rcr-rcn/about/governance/international-advisory-committee/adalsteinn-brown ↩︎ ↩︎
Hayeems, R. Z., Moore Hepburn, C., Chakraborty, P., Odame, I., Clarke, J., Miller, F. A., & Brown, A. D. (2017). Managing sickle cell carrier results generated through newborn screening in Ontario: a precedent-setting policy story. Genetics in Medicine, 19(6), 625–627. https://doi.org/10.1038/gim.2016.162 ↩︎
Key Researcher Profiles. (2001, August 22). Hospital Report Project; University of Toronto. https://web.archive.org/web/20010822143907/http://www.hospitalreport.ca/ResearcherProfilesPg4.htm ↩︎ ↩︎
Mayer, A., McKinnon, M., Shulgan, C., & Smith, M. (2003, April 25). Top forty/under forty. The Globe and Mail. http://archive.today/2021.01.12-230440/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/top-fortyunder-forty/article18285266/ ↩︎ ↩︎
The Hospital Report 2001 Series. (2001, July 26). Hospital Reports Project; University of Toronto. https://web.archive.org/web/20010809234902/http://www.hospitalreport.ca/ ↩︎
Hallway Health Care: A System Under Strain – First Interim Report from the Premier’s Council on Improving Healthcare and Ending Hallway Medicine - Public Information - MOHLTC. (2018). Ontario Health. http://archive.today/2022.01.23-050048/https://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/publications/premiers_council/report.aspx%23bios ↩︎
Lempert, R. (2021, May 15). Meet Adalsteinn Brown: Swamp King; OST; Dean Of DLSPH; Ministry Of Health; Ford Operative; Premier’s Council. Canuck Law.
http://archive.today/2021.05.15-151530/https://canucklaw.ca/meet-adalsteinn-brown-swamp-king-ost-dean-of-dlsph-ministry-of-health-ford-operative-premiers-council/ ↩︎ ↩︎Khan, Y., O’Sullivan, T., Brown, A., Tracey, S., Gibson, J., Généreux, M., Henry, B., & Schwartz, B. (2018). Public health emergency preparedness: a framework to promote resilience. BMC Public Health, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6250-7 ↩︎
Brown, A. D. (2021). Declaration of Interest (p. 1). Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. https://web.archive.org/web/20220611004755/https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Declaration-of-Interest_Science-Table_Adalsteinn-Brown_20211014.pdf ↩︎ ↩︎
Fox, C. (2022, March 31). Science table to be folded into arms-length government agency. CP24. http://archive.today/2022.05.13-075032/https://www.cp24.com/news/science-table-to-be-folded-into-arms-length-government-agency-1.5843357 ↩︎
Brown, A. D. (2022, January 20). Declaration of Interest. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. https://web.archive.org/web/20230711181903/https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Declaration-of-Interest_Behavioural-Science-Working-Group_Adalsteinn-Brown_20220120.pdf ↩︎
Lavery, I. (2020, August 19). University of Toronto launches new Institute for Pandemics. Daily Hive. http://archive.today/2022.01.22-073355/https://dailyhive.com/toronto/university-of-toronto-launches-new-institute-for-pandemics?auto=true ↩︎
The Canadian Press. (2021, December 16). Experts say circuit breaker necessary to blunt Omicron’s effect in Ontario. MSN News. http://archive.today/2022.01.22-074345/https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/experts-say-circuit-breaker-necessary-to-blunt-omicrons-effect-in-ontario/ar-AARSx2c ↩︎
Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table Leadership Update August 2022. (2022, August 3). Public Health Ontario. http://archive.today/2022.09.04-170747/https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/About/News/2022/Ontario-COVID-19-SAT-Leadership-Update-August-2022 ↩︎