astronomy

John Lavis

John Lavis is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Lavis rather than just read about it. In short: John Norman Lavis (born June 11, 1965) is a Canadian physician based in Toronto, Ontario. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Health Evidence and Impact at McMaster University, where he founded and directs the McMaster Health Forum.

Key takeaways

John Lavis belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Lavis to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Lavis from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Norman Lavis (born June 11, 1965) is a Canadian physician based in Toronto, Ontario. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Health Evidence and Impact at McMaster University, where he founded and directs the McMaster Health Forum. He is co-lead of Rapid-Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE). Lavis serves as the director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Evidence-Informed Policy and chairs the Advisory Committee on Health Research to the Pan American Health Organization. He additionally holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Evidence-Informed Health Systems. He has co-led various research and policy development activities during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, including participation on the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table and the COVID-19 Evidence Network to Support Decision-Making (COVID-END).

Early life and education Lavis was born June 11, 1965, in Montréal, Quebec. He earned his MD at Queen's University at Kingston from 1983 to 1989, at which time he joined the Canadian Medical Association and the Ontario Medical Association. He did a rotating internship at North York General Hospital through the University of Toronto from 1989 to 1990, earning him a certificate in Clinical Traineeship in HIV Infection. He then completed a Master of Sciences in Health Planning and Financing at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1991 to 1992, and briefly worked as a visiting research fellow in the Health Policy Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 1992, he consulted for the World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS on the cost of HIV prevention strategies in developing countries. He worked as a research fellow at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) then attended Harvard University for his PhD in Health Policy from 1994 to 1997. During the summer of 1995 he worked as a research fellow at the Institute for Work and Health, returning again in June 1996 until his Harvard graduation in 1997.

Career Lavis was hired as a professor at McMaster University in September 1997. That same year, he performed consulting work for the World Bank and the Conference Board of Canada. In 1998 and 1999, he worked with the Department of Canadian Heritage on the subject of social cohesion and health. He was given the status of assistant professor at the University of Toronto from January 1999 to June 2001. He was principal investigator for the Health Evidence Applications and Linkage Network (HEALNet) under the National Centres of Excellence from 1999 to 2002. This work with HEALNet was featured at the Fourth International Conference on the Scientific Basis of Health Services in Sydney, Australia in September 2001. He assisted the Milbank Memorial Fund in setting up their population health website in 2000 and 2001. From 2001 to 2006, Lavis was a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Transfer and Uptake, and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Transfer and Exchange from 2006 to 2011. Lavis co-developed the Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) alongside the World Health Organization in the mid-2000s, and he remains co-chair of the global steering group. He founded the McMaster Health Forum in April 2009. He was made co-director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Evidence-Informed Policy in December 2010. From 2012 to 2017, Lavis was an adjunct professor of global health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Lavis was awarded the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Evidence-Informed Health Systems in January 2015. He became a visiting adjunct professor at the University of Johannesburg in April 2018, and was promoted to director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Evidence-Informed Policy in December 2018. In July 2019, he began co-leading the Rapid-Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE) program.

COVID-19 pandemic Lavis participated as a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table from 2020 to 2022, where he was responsible for contributing to guidance for provincial decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario. He is co-lead investigator for the COVID-19 Evidence Network to Support Decision-Making (COVID-END), through which he has gathered evidence syntheses related to protocols for treatment and management of COVID-19 since April 2020. In this role, he also co-led the Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges, which published the Evidence Commission report in January 2022. Lavis participated as a speaker at the March 2022 Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning (CEDIL) conference.

Research In 2002, Lavis contributed a discussion paper titled Political Elites and Their Influence on Health-Care Reform In Canada to the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada (otherwise known as the Romanow Commission). As the Canada Research Chair in Evidence-Informed Health Systems, Lavis is evaluating how governments prepare themselves and make decisions relating to public health policy. This work is focused both on COVID-19 and long-standing health crises in Canada. Lavis has published research on the topics of international treaties, evidence-based policy, medical technology in long-term care settings, and international health, among others.

Other activities AcademyHealth, member AIDS Committee of Toronto, former chair Africa Centre for Evidence, adjunct professor Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Population Health Program scholar (1998, 2000–2003) Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Health Policy and Systems Management grants review committee chair Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA), Member (1996–2018) Closing the Gap Healthcare, advisory board member Commonwealth Fund, Harkness Fellows program Canadian associate (2001–2002) European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, research associate (2007–2010) Fife House Foundation, former president Health Systems Global, member (2012–present) Institut de recherche et de documentation en économie de la santé, visiting researcher (2003–2004) Michael G. DeGroote Cochrane Canada Centre, associate director (2016–2018) Ontario HIV Treatment Network, Research Network Advisory Committee chair Partnership for Evidence and Equity in Responsive Social Systems, Partner Executive Group chair

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Lavis

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Lavis claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Lavis before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Lavis ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Lavis

In research: John Lavis appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Lavis in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Lavis is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1965 births, Academic staff of McMaster University, Academic staff of the University of Toronto, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Lavis outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “John Lavis” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study John Lavis in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Lavis means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Lavis out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Lavis in simple terms?

Why does John Lavis matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Lavis?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Lavis.