Roos, Leslie L.

Leslie L. Roos is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba (Canada), the founding director of the Population Health Research Data Repository, and Senior Researcher at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. Roos is a recognized expert in the use of administrative databases in conducting health services research.

Roos received a bachelor's degree with honors in psychology and biology from Stanford University in 1962. With awards from the National Science Foundation and Social Science Research Council, he earned a doctoral degree in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in political science at MIT. Following academic appointments at Brandeis and Northwestern Universities, in 1973, Roos joined the University of Manitoba as an associate and was subsequently full professor in the Faculty of Administrative Studies (now the Asper School of Business). His early research resulted in three books and numerous papers on social science methods and organizational behavior. Roos moved to the University of Manitoba's Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine in 1990.

Roos's substantive work includes a number of papers comparing health and healthcare in Canada and the United States, looking at primary and secondary prevention among socioeconomic groups over time, and analyzing alternative approaches to funding Canadian Medicare. Roos's studies have helped transform research approaches in health services, health policy, and population health. Recent papers are expanding the applicability of his work in epidemiology, economics, and sociology. Current research has been examining the effects of family and place on well-being.

Roos has received over $20 million in research support (several grants have been in collaboration with researchers based across Canada as well as at several U.S. universities), and he has been invited to venues as diverse as Australia and Spain to give short courses on his work.

Roos's contributions in health services research have been recognized nationally and internationally and through the ongoing success of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. He has published approximately 186 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters with collaborators from leading universities. Roos has been honored as a “Highly Cited Investigator” by the Institute of Scientific Information. His citations recently tallied almost [Page 1047]2,800, the highest number of citations by any Canadian social scientist. Journals in which he has published include Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Journal of the American Medical Association, Medical Care, Milbank Quarterly, New England Journal of Medicine, and Social Science and Medicine.

Roos received career funding from the National Health Research and Development Program for over 20 years. He is a fellow of AcademyHealth and an associate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. His work contributed substantially to the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy's receipt of the 2001 Health Services Research Advancement Award from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) and the 2005 regional Knowledge Translation award from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

Roos has received awards from the University of Manitoba for research excellence, outreach, and graduate student mentorship.