DLSPH Data Resources

   

Enriching health research with CanPath

The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath), a centre at DLSPH, provides researchers with comprehensive genomic, clinical, behavioural, and environmental data from more than 330,000 Canadians.

CanPath has supported over 320 research projects and over 340 publications, including research on diabetes, lung disease, arthritis, heart disease, and cancer, environmental exposures such as arsenic and air pollution, and infectious diseases like COVID-19.

CanPath’s cost recovery access fees model is designed to be accessible, with tiered pricing to suit the different budgets of students, early-career researchers, and established researchers.

Interested in accessing CanPath data? Explore available data and apply online at portal.canpath.ca.

Training the next generation of researchers

CanPath developed a synthetic dataset that gives trainees the unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience working with CanPath data. This dataset mirrors the core data but is anonymized and simplified to facilitate learning and coursework.

DLSPH instructors can make this dataset and its supporting data dictionary available in their courses at no cost.

Learn more about the dataset and how to apply: https://canpath.ca/student-dataset/

The Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research consortium (CANUE) develops and delivers environmental data to support health research across the country. CANUE also develops web-based tools enabling mapping, analysis and reporting of the distribution of environmental exposures and environmental inequities in cities across Canada.

CANUE data is available to academic researchers through the canuedata.ca data portal. Researchers can make a data request from this portal and once approved (typically within 48 hours) users can download any data in self-serve fashion.

Public users are encouraged to visit HealthyPlan.City, where many CANUE datasets are readily visualizable alongside functionality for environmental equity mapping. Users can request the download of one environmental variable for a single city.

University of Toronto Data Resources

U of T Dataverse in Borealis is the University of Toronto’s institutional data repository. It is hosted by Borealis, a secure, bilingual, multidisciplinary repository platform that supports discovery, management, sharing, and preservation of Canadian research data. Borealis is supported by academic libraries and research institutions across Canada, with the University of Toronto operating as the national service provider.

The University of Toronto holds extensive data collections, including numeric and geospatial data. MDL staff can help you locate datasets both within these extensive collections and elsewhere.

MDL includes Geospatial, Numeric, Maps and Atlases data

This collaborative initiative, hosted by the Division of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation (VPRI) at the University of Toronto (U of T), aims to strengthen Canada’s social research capacity, support policy-relevant research, and provide insights on important issues by leveraging Statistics Canada’s rich data for academic and policy-relevant research. The Toronto Research Data Centre (Toronto RDC), part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN), facilitates access to crucial social and economic data while ensuring the confidentiality and security of Canadians’ information. Researchers can collaborate on team projects within the Toronto RDC, as well as in cross-Canada team projects involving multiple RDCs.

Academic and government (federal, provincial/territorial) researchers can apply for access to data by submitting a detailed proposal through the MicroData Access Portal.

External

Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN Canada) is a pan-Canadian network of member organizations that either hold linkable health and health-related data for entire populations and/or have mandates and roles relating directly to access or use of those data. Member organizations include provincial, territorial, and pan-Canadian organizations that span all of Canada. Each member organization is actively involved in HDRN Canada’s governance and operations and shares a commitment to our mission, vision and values.

Data access: https://www.hdrn.ca/en/dash/

The Data Access Support Hub (DASH) is a one-stop data access service portal for researchers requiring multi-regional health and health-related administrative data in Canada.

 

The Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) is a large, national research platform on health and aging allowing researchers to answer critical questions on the biological, medical, psychological, social, lifestyle and economic aspects of aging, disability and disease. The CLSA follows 51,338 men and women who were aged 45 to 85 at recruitment, for 20 years.

            Data access: https://www.clsa-elcv.ca/researchers/

Designed as a national, longitudinal research platform, the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) includes participants from all 10 Canadian provinces and collects comprehensive data and biological samples that support a wide variety of aging-related research questions. Researchers can apply to access de-identified data from more than 50,000 participants that include biological, medical, psychological, social, lifestyle and economic aspects of aging, disability and disease.

ICES leads cutting-edge studies that evaluate healthcare delivery and outcomes. ICES researchers access a vast and secure array of Ontario’s health-related data, including population-based health surveys, anonymous patient records and clinical and administrative databases. ICES is recognized as a leader in maintaining the privacy and security of health information.

ICES UofT is located on the campus of the University of Toronto (UofT) and was built to provide a new resource for training graduate students for careers in health services and policy research

Data access: https://www.ices.on.ca/use-ices-data/

Public sector researchers who want to access ICES data to answer a research question may submit a request to ICES Data & Analytic Services (DAS). DAS staff will contact the requestor to discuss the project’s feasibility, timeline and cost. Projects requesting access to data require the approval of a research ethics board (REB).