MAP policy impact: Ontario Primary Care Act, 2025

For the past two years, MAP scientist Dr. Tara Kiran has been working with governments and healthcare decision-makers across the country to put her OurCare results into action.

On June 5, 2025, the Government of Ontario passed the Primary Care Act, a framework of six ambitious, patient-centred objectives for Ontario’s publicly funded primary care system.

The objectives are clearly based on MAP’s OurCare Standard—six statements that describe what every person in Canada should expect from our primary care system.

To call this historic is an understatement,” said MAP scientist, OurCare lead and U of T Fidani Chair Dr. Tara Kiran.

This legislation will make Ontario the first Canadian jurisdiction to establish a framework to improve its primary care system. The Minister is now required to prepare an annual report describing how the Government of Ontario is working to achieve the Act’s objectives.

About OurCare: In 2023, MAP led the largest-ever public consultation on primary health care, collecting input and ideas from close to 10,000 people across Canada. In 2024, we distilled what we heard into the groundbreaking OurCare Standard: six simple statements that describe what every patient in Canada should be able to expect from primary care. The Standard represents a concrete and achievable vision and a new benchmark for assessing the quality of primary care in Canada. This national initiative was made possible through generous support from Staples Canada (Even the Odds), Max Bell Foundation and Health Canada.

Harm-reduction vending machines aim to fill gap after Ontario closes supervised drug-use sites

Our Healthbox is rolling out their harm-reduction vending machines across the country. The latest machine has been installed in the former Bond Place Hotel in downtown Toronto, which is now a supportive housing building. It is the city’s first Our Healthbox unit – and its first such machine to be located in a supportive housing building.

“This is about more than just providing supplies – it’s about restoring dignity and trust in health care,” said project lead Dr. Sean Rourke.

Ontario has more family doctors, but fewer are working in primary care, study shows

Why, as the number of family doctors per capita in Canada grew, did it become more difficult to find one? A new publication by MAP’s Dr. Tara Kiran sheds light on where the nearly 40 per cent of the 6,310 family doctors who entered the physician work force since 1993 have ended up working within the health-care system.

Coverage of this study was recently featured on the front cover of The Globe and Mail. The story was also featured in the Toronto Star, CTV, CP24 and om CBC, Global News and CTV radio stations across the country.