Tamara Daly

Dr. Tamara Daly, BA, MA, PhD

Full Professor, Health Policy & Equity, Faculty of Health, York University

School of Health Policy & Management and Graduate Program in Health

Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo

Director, York University Centre for Aging Research & Education (2016 – 2026)

Director, SSHRC Partnership: Imagine Aging (2018 – present)

CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Care Work & Health (2013 – 2018)

Recently…by Tamara Daly

…a ‘longevity divide‘ marks those who will live longer, healthier and wealthier by cashing in their ‘longevity dividend’, from those who will not. The latter group live and die under a ‘longevity penalty‘: the result of a cumulative disadvantage that accrues interest over their lives, ballooning their individual costs, and robbing them of time.” 

– Tamara Daly, Chapter 15, The Longevity Divide in a Globalised Climate – A Forward Conclusion, in, Ageing Equitably with Care, (2025) p. 256-7

Academic Bio

Professor Tamara Daly is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in aging, long-term care, home care, community supports and health equity. Her groundbreaking research has transformed understanding of how care systems can better support older adults, families, and care workers. A gifted communicator and dedicated mentor, she bridges research, policy, and community engagement to advance equitable, accessible, and rights-based care. Her co-edited book, Aging Equitably with Care, reflects two decades of influential scholarship grounded in inclusion and social justice. Her leadership, vision, and impact have strengthened Canada’s health systems and improved the lives of those who depend on care.

Research

As a health services researcher and a feminist political economist, I am a highly regarded public intellectual who is expert in international comparisons of aged care, long-term care quality working and care conditions, labour process, care work and social reproduction, data use to assess quality of care and work, ageing and healthy cities, and promising policy and practice approaches that support age equity and age inclusion. 

I have led multiple large teams in studies that pioneer international, comparative team-based rapid ethnography within mixed method, multi-site case studies of care for older adults.

My work contributes to the following substantive areas:

  • Paid and unpaid care work and working conditions, comparing the division of labour internationally and structural violence due to under-staffing in nursing homes, which contributes to poor quality of care and work as well as a culture that normalizes workplace violence
  • The complexities of using privately paid companions and families in long-term residential care as informal care working alongside facility staff, volunteers and students in nursing homes. 
  • Debates about how regulatory regimes impact front-line care for seniors through my international comparative studies, particularly taking up issues related to public stewardship, public reporting, data quality, and metrics and measurement. 
  • Relational health and social care that shapes quality of life, care and work with older adults.
  • Promising policy and practice level changes that can promote age equity and age inclusion, considering conditions of poverty, social isolation and marginalization — due to social locations of gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, racialization and ethnicity, migration and class — and big policy questions related to housing, public space, advocacy and voice, engagement, dignity, inclusion and the role of the state, non-profits and the market.

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“…a health equity approach assumes that some groups will require more services, or ones delivered differently to attend to specific needs and others that can redress systemic barriers like poverty”

— Tamara Daly, Feminist Political Economy, Health and Care, in The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Health and Healthcare, p. 67

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