Louise Bouchard
Chercheur

Biography

Professor Bouchard is an interdisciplinary health researcher who has been affiliated with the University of Ottawa's Institute of Population Health and the Monfort Hospital Research Institute. There, she developed a pioneering research program on the health of Canada's official language minorities. With her colleague Anne Leis, she obtained a major research capacity development grant from the CIHR and set up the Réseau interdisciplinaire de recherche sur la santé des francophones (RISF) (CIHR 2006-2011) to study the socio-environmental, cultural and structural factors influencing health disparities in minority francophone communities. In 2009, she obtained substantial research funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) for the development of the Réseau de recherche appliquée sur la santé les francophones de l'Ontario (www.RRASFO.ca). These two experiences as scientific directors of research programs have helped propel interdisciplinary and intersectoral research into a scarcely explored field - the health of Canada's official language minorities. A 2013 supplement to the Canadian Journal of Public Health, coordinated by L Bouchard and A Leis, brought together some 18 articles from the research, 9 of which are associated with L Bouchard as author or co-author. A volume of the journal REFLETS (2012) also focused on health inequalities in French-speaking minority communities in Canada. In addition to coordinating the project, Professeure Bouchard authored 3 articles. She has also published a book, Minorités de langue officielle du Canada, égales devant la santé? (2011), which brings together all the research on this issue.

In 2011, Professeure Bouchard was co-chair of the 4th International Conference on Local and Regional Health Programs, the meeting place for change-makers and action for health improvement. This conference, held in Ottawa, was an opportunity to mark the 25th anniversary of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, with players from the 1st hour: Ilona Kickbusch, David McQueen and Irving Rootman. The proceedings were published in Global Health Promotion (2014). L Bouchard coordinated the issue and authored 3 articles.

In 2014, a research fund from the MOHLTC enabled it to develop the Minority Health Observation prototype (www.obs-santéminorites.ca), an extremely useful platform for research collaboration and knowledge transfer to better understand official language minorities.

Since 2006, L Bouchard has obtained over 3.5 million in research funding as principal investigator or co-investigator, resulting in 8 monographs, 7 book chapters, 30 scientific articles, 56 refereed conferences, 19 technical reports, 37 invited conferences, two scientific network directorships, 1 observation and research prototype on the health of official language minorities.

Les travaux de professeure Bouchard ont pu éclairer l’impact de la situation minoritaire comme déterminant de la santé en recourant à différentes approches : épidémiologie sociale, cartographie conceptuelle des représentations, analyse de réseaux,  système d’information géographique.

Research interests

• Sociology of health, illness, and medicine
• Sociology of knowledge, science, and technology
• Social determinants of health
• Social inequalities in health, health and official language minorities
• Socio-health system and social structure and dynamics