I am a health policy researcher, political economist, and PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. I have broad interests in the the spatial, political-economic, and social dimensions of health care policymaking and reform.

I am also a research associate with the BC Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and publish health policy and health services research on a variety of topics, including health care funding, privatization, surgical wait times, pandemic response, seniors’ care, physician compensation and primary care reform. I am a frequent commentator on health policy issues, and my research and commentaries have appeared in/on CBC, CKNW, CTV, Global, The Globe and Mail, Healthy Debate, Policy Note, Policy Options, The Province, The Toronto Star, The Tyee, The Vancouver Sun, amongst others.

I use mixed-methods approaches to explain processes of health system change, including the use of interviews, financial and statistical analysis, Freedom of Information requests, and content analysis.

Doctoral research

My doctoral research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, examines comparative primary care reform in British Columbia, England, and Scotland. I use a comparative political economy approach to study the movement and implementation of market-oriented health policy reforms and health services restructuring in Canada and the UK. 

This research seeks to explain how funding and governance innovations in the three jurisdictions – including local experimentation ­­­­– are reshaping the roles of government, providers, and civil society in primary care organization and delivery, and broader health system governance. It seeks to understand what effects these changes have on citizens served by these public health care systems, and how political struggles over the marketization of public health care are expressed through, and influenced by, primary care reform. Using a mixed-methods, case study approach, my research seeks to explain how the political and economic aspects of primary care reform shape whether jurisdictions are successful – or not – in their efforts to improve population health and contain health care costs within a context of fiscal pressure. This research also seeks to interrogate how jurisdictions define 'success' and 'failure' – and how this is shaped by learning (or not) from elsewhere.

Education

• PhD candidate, Human Geography, Simon Fraser University

  • Advisor: Dr. Eugene McCann

  • Committee: Dr. Damien Contandriopoulos (UVic), Dr. Kendra Strauss (SFU)

• MA, Human Geography, Simon Fraser University

  • Thesis: Policy Frontiers: City-Regional Politics of Drug Policy Mobility

• BA (Hons), Human Geography, University of British Columbia

I can be reached by email at andrew_longhurst[at]sfu.ca. Follow me on Twitter.