Podcasts about cihr

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) have become integral components of Canadian science funding. In this episode, we explore Pierre Poilievre's plan to strip funding from research programs that incorporate so-called "woke" policies like EDI. We examine how EDI policies are currently embedded in major grants from NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR, and more, and discuss what could be at stake for Canada's research innovation if these changes move forward. Pierre Poilievre's proposal has sparked a broader debate within the Canadian academic and scientific communities. Many fear that removing EDI requirements could turn back progress made toward ensuring more inclusive and impactful research environments. We'll dive into what these policies actually achieve, why they were implemented, and the potential future of science in Canada. Follow a career in conservation: https://www.conservation-careers.com/online-training/ Use the code SUFB to get 33% off courses and the careers program.   Do you want to join my Ocean Community? Sign Up for Updates on the process: www.speakupforblue.com/oceanapp   Sign up for our Newsletter: http://www.speakupforblue.com/newsletter   Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3NmYvsI Connect with Speak Up For Blue: Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube  

THIS IS A REPLAY OF EPISODE #85 FROM THE PSYCH HEALTH AND SAFETY PODCAST CANADA The Psych Health and Safety Podcast will be returning 14th January 2025! In this episode Ian speaks with Dr. Sandra Moll and they discuss why and how the peer support apps PeerOnCall (https://www.oncallapp.ca/) and Beyond Silence (https://www.beyondsilence.ca/) can provide game-changing early intervention for public safety personnel and healthcare workers. Early intervention can prevent a significant degree of harm and suffering. Sandra describes the design, implementation, and function of the apps. Currently the apps are in a research phase where they are researching "what works for whom in what context" to optimize efforts. In the podcast we review how peer support fits in the continuum of workplace mental health recommended by the WHO and why apps and the real people they connect can have a great impact. Peer support is one of many tools and having the right service at the right time can be critical to obtaining early support. PeerOnCall evaluation research was funded by Movember, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Beyond Silence research was funded by CIHR and PHAC. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Government of Canada.

Welcome to PsychEd, the psychiatry podcast for medical learners, by medical learners. This episode covers psychotherapy in youth with Dr. Laurence Katz, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Katz received his medical and adult psychiatric training at the University of Manitoba and his child and adolescent psychiatry training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx N.Y. He is an adjunct scientist at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and has published numerous papers using the population health administrative database in mental health outcomes. He has held and been part of numerous grants funded by CIHR, PHAC, and other national funding agencies related to work with First Nations communities. Dr. Katz is widely published in particular in the areas of suicide and suicidal behaviour. His other research interests include Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, pharmacoepidemiology, and implementation of complex interventions. The learning objectives for this episode are as follows: By the end of this episode, the listener will be able to… Outline which psychotherapeutic modalities are commonly used in youth Identify which youth may benefit/should be referred for psychotherapy Discuss important considerations in delivering psychotherapy to youth Guest: Dr. Laurence Katz Hosts: Wendy MacMillan-Wang, Shaoyuan Wang, Kate Braithwaite, and Sara Abrahamson Audio editing by: Angad Singh Show notes by: Kate Braithwaite Interview content: Introduction - 0:04 Guest introduction - 00:44 Learning objectives - 05:25 Definitions - 06:00 Types of psychotherapy in youth - 07:44 Evolution of psychotherapy in youth over time - 13:10 Psychotherapy in suicide prevention/risk mitigation - 16:24 Challenges in research: decrease in effect sizes over time - 18:32 Conditions responding best to psychotherapy - 22:01 Youth specific modalities - 26:44 Summary of learning objective 1 - 29:49 Indications and contraindications - 30:23 Consent - 37:31 Group therapy - 39:31 Summary of learning objective 2 - 46:27 Differences in psychotherapy in youth compared to adults in practice - 47:10 Techniques for engagement of youth - 53:32 Family involvement - 58:21 Confidentiality - 1:02:39 Use of mobile apps/internet-based therapies - 1:07:20 Summary of learning objective 3 - 1:11:17 Other considerations - 1:12:35 End credits - 1:16:52 References: Agostino, H., & Toulany, A. (2023). Considerations for privacy and confidentiality in adolescent health care service delivery. Paediatrics & Child Health, 28(3), 172–183. https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/pxac117 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. (2019, April). Psychotherapies for children and adolescents: different types. Facts for Families Guide. Retrieved from https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Psychotherapies-For-Children-And-Adolescents-086.aspx Bailin, A., Cho, E., Sternberg, A., & others. (2023). Principle-guided psychotherapy for children and adolescents (FIRST): Study protocol for a randomized controlled effectiveness trial in outpatient clinics. Trials, 24, Article 682. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-023-07717-y Bhide, A., & Chakraborty, K. (2020). General principles for psychotherapeutic interventions in children and adolescents. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 62(Suppl 2), S299–S318. CADDRA - Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance. (2020). Canadian ADHD practice guidelines (4.1 ed.). Toronto, ON: CADDRA. Christner, R. W., Stewart, J. L., & Mulligan, C. A. (Eds.). (2024). Handbook of cognitive-behavior group therapy with children and adolescents: Specific settings and presenting problems (2nd ed.). Routledge. Campisi, S. C., Ataullahjan, A., Baxter, J. B., Szatmari, P., & Bhutta, Z. A. (2022). Mental health interventions in adolescence. Current Opinion in Psychology, 48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101492 Katzman, M. A., Bleau, P., Blier, P., & others. (2014). Canadian clinical practice guidelines for the management of anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. BMC Psychiatry, 14(Suppl 1), S1. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-14-S1-S1 Kendall, P. C., Ney, J. S., Maxwell, C. A., Lehrbach, K. R., Jakubovic, R. J., McKnight, D. S., & Friedman, A. L. (2023). Adapting CBT for youth anxiety: Flexibility within fidelity in different settings. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, Article 1067047. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1067047 Kernberg, P. F., Ritvo, R., Keable, H., & American Academy of Child an Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) Committee on Quality Issues (CQI) (2012). Practice Parameter for psychodynamic psychotherapy with children. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 51(5), 541–557. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2012.02.015 Lam, R. W., Kennedy, S. H., Adams, C., & others. (2024). Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) 2023 update on clinical guidelines for management of major depressive disorder in adults: Réseau canadien pour les traitements de l'humeur et de l'anxiété (CANMAT) 2023: Mise à jour des lignes directrices cliniques pour la prise en charge du trouble dépressif majeur chez les adultes. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 69(9), 641–687. https://doi.org/10.1177/07067437241245384 Oetzel, K. B., & Scherer, D. G. (2003). Therapeutic engagement with adolescents in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 40(3), 215–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-3204.40.3.215 Wergeland, G. J., Fjermestad, K. W., Marin, C. E., Haugland, B. S., Bjaastad, J. F., Oeding, K., Bjelland, I., Silverman, W. K., Öst, L. G., Havik, Ø. E., & Heiervang, E. R. (2014). An effectiveness study of individual versus group cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders in youth. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 57, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2014.03.007 Witt, K. G., Hetrick, S. E., Rajaram, G., Hazell, P., Taylor Salisbury, T. L., Townsend, E., & Hawton, K. (2021). Interventions for self-harm in children and adolescents. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 3, Article CD013667. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD013667.pub2 Yatham, L. N., Kennedy, S. H., Parikh, S. V., Schaffer, A., Bond, D. J., Frey, B. N., Sharma, V., Goldstein, B. I., Rej, S., Beaulieu, S., Alda, M., MacQueen, G., Milev, R. V., Ravindran, A., O'Donovan, C., McIntosh, D., Lam, R. W., Vazquez, G., Kapczinski, F., McIntyre, R. S., Kozicky, J., Kanba, S., Lafer, B., Suppes, T., Calabrese, J. R., Vieta, E., Malhi, G., Post, R. M., & Berk, M. (2018). Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) and International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) 2018 guidelines for the management of patients with bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disorders, 20(2), 97–170. https://doi.org/10.1111/bdi.12609 For more PsychEd, follow us on Instagram (@psyched.podcast), X (@psychedpodcast), and Facebook (PsychEd Podcast). You can provide feedback by email at psychedpodcast@gmail.com. For more information, visit our website at psychedpodcast.org.

Dr. Kevin Mailo welcomes Dr. Kerstin de Wit, a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Queen's University and a very active clinician and researcher practicing both emergency medicine and thrombosis medicine. Dr. Kerstin de Wit was interviewed for an article in the National Post that featured survey data from her latest research into high levels of burnout amongst emergency physicians. Her research was published in June's edition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine and it reveals the levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization aspects of burnout spiking in emergency medicine personnel. Dr. de Wit's study compared physician burnout levels during 2020, the first year of the pandemic, to levels reported in October 2022. The initial survey revealed that roughly 50% of physicians participating in the survey exhibited high levels of burnout already. In 2022 the levels had increased significantly. Emotional exhaustion, one of the two measured elements of burnout, had increased by an absolute 16% of the cohort, and depersonalization had increased by an absolute 12% of the cohort. Dr. Mailo and Dr. de Wit discuss how alarmingly high the revealed levels of burnout are, the realities and consequences of depersonalization, the quotes from the study that revealed how people feel about the broken state of healthcare in Canada today, and what can be done to lessen the burnout and mend the damaged healthcare and ER departments across Canada. This is a key episode about emergency medicine and the burnout crisis that will take serious intervention to turn around. About Dr. Kerstin de Wit, MD:Kerstin de Wit holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Emergency Venous Thromboembolism and is a Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Queen's University. She works clinically as an emergency physician and thrombosis physician at Kingston Health Sciences.Dr de Wit was trained in internal medicine, emergency medicine, and research in the UK. She completed a Thrombosis Fellowship in Ottawa in 2013. Since then, she has worked in both emergency medicine and thrombosis. She leads a research program which focuses on the diagnosis of bleeding and clotting disorders in the emergency department and is funded by CIHR.Dr de Wit is the Queen's University Clinician Investigator Program Director and the Research Director for the Department of Emergency Medicine. __Resources discussed in this episode:“A Longitudinal Survey on Canadian Emergency Physician Burnout” Annals of Emergency Medicine, Volume 83, Issue 6, P576-584, June 2024, by Kerstin de Wit, MBChB, MD; Anna Tran, BSc; Natasha Clayton, CRA, RA; Caroline Gérin-Lajoie, MD; and Mathew Mercuri, PhD, PhD“‘I don't think I'll last': How Canada's emergency room crisis could be killing thousands” by Sharon Kirkey, National Post, July 19, 2024__Dr. Kerstin de Wit:Queen's University Emergency Medicine Faculty: Dr. Kerstin de Wit, MDKerstin de Wit on X/TwitterPhysician Empowerment: Attend an upcoming Empowerment RetreatJoin the Physician Empowerment Masterclass nowWebsite: PhysEmpowerment.ca

A behavioural neuroscientist in Saskatoon is uncovering marijuana's effects on fetal brain development.  After recently winning a five-year CIHR grant of $960,076 in the spring of 2024, Dr. John Howland's lab at the University of Saskatchewan is expanding its work examining prenatal exposure to cannabis smoke. Howland's teams will assess the way cannabis exposure alters higher brain functions like memory and learning in both rats and mice. Compared to cannabis injections in the past, the professor of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology at the College of Medicine said exposing rodents to high-potency smoke for up to 15 minutes at a time provides a more realistic picture of marijuana's effects on fetal brain development.  Over their lives, Howland will measure changes in cortical limbic circuitruity, for both rodent mothers and their offspring.  “The cortex is definitely involved, but we also look at other areas like the hippocampus and the amygdala,” said Howland. “There's pretty good evidence that they are at least subtly affected after gestational exposure to cannabis.” Now, it's a matter of quantifying which circuits cannabis affects in the rodent brain — under circumstances as close to real-life human exposure as Howland's laboratory can create.  "It's not simple," said Howland. He notes a wide variety of phenotypes of THC and CBD strains are now available at retailers, each with its own characteristics and potential interactions with neurons.  “These receptors are involved in many discrete events during brain development,” he said. "We're hoping to be more controlled and more specific."  Howland's team is also searching for ways to stem damage from high-potency strains, while exploring therapies like exercise to counteract cannabis exposure and help future generations grow healthier brains.   He said cannabis may be legal -- but that does not make it safe. "It turns out a lot of things that are legal like alcohol and tobacco aren't that safe during pregnancy either," said Howland. "I think more knowledge has to be helpful as women make these decisions for themselves.”

The sense of isolation that Antarctica brings is achieved in part thanks to an international collaboration and treaty that sees Antarctica as an unowned land, open to science and discovery. It is closely and collectively monitored by protocols that visiting parties agree to follow and therefore, it's a perfect stage for programs focused on leadership and sustainability. Our speaker, who will account her experience, did her homework, and then some, before embarking on her 19-night tour of Antarctica as part of the Homeward Bound global leadership initiative for women with a background in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM). And yet no amount of preparation could rival the experience of interacting with the beauty and remoteness that is the world's fifth-largest and least-populated continent. Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Copeland Jennifer Copeland is an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science and a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education. She completed a B.Sc. in Biology at Mount Allison University and attended graduate school at the University of New Brunswick where she earned a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology. Copeland's research interests focus on the effect of physical activity and sedentary behaviour on health across the lifespan, with a particular focus on healthy aging. Her doctoral research focused on exercise physiology and she now uses a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach to explore both the consequences and determinants of our daily movement behaviours. A major goal of Dr. Copeland's program is knowledge translation and she engages regularly in research collaborations with community partners and stakeholders. Her laboratory, the Active Healthy Aging Lab, has received funding from CIHR, CFI, PolicyWise for Children and Families, the Sport Science Association of Alberta, and other agencies.

In this feature segment of asPERusual, guest listener and patient partner Kathy Smith offers a short recap and her key takeaways from last week's episode of asPERusual focused on Patient Advisor Network's Reimagining the Research Landscape report. Tune in to this short (~10 minute) episode, regardless of whether you want to compare reflections or get the Coles notes of the full Reimagining the Research Landscape episode.Episode Transcript:Anna:Hi everyone! Welcome back to onePERspective. A tri-weekly segment in which patient partner Kathy Smith recaps the previous week's episode of asPERusual – a podcast for practical patient engagement. Today's episode of onePERspective is special for two reasons.For starters it marks the first time that Kathy and I have actually seen each other in-person. Although we've worked together for over two years in varying capacities, we hadn't met each other until a few days ago, when Kathy came into town to help co-lead data collection for a participatory design study we are both a part of. As we met I couldn't help but think of what Alies, our previous episode's guest had said when she appeared on Season 1 Episode 8 of asPERusual. That is, how funny it is to know someone for a long time as a floating head and then to finally meet them in person with a whole body attached. I'm so glad we finally got a chance to hang out in-person Kathy and I hope the opportunities to do so keep coming. And for anyone who is interested, check out our free newsletter or website (asperusual.substack.com) for a photo from our meeting.Another reason this episode is special is that it focuses on a detour from our regular season 2 programming. That is, the episode focused on a patient-led report from our friends at the Patient Advisors Network, instead of a Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research funded entity. Although I do love patterns and neat boxes, I felt that this deviation was very important given the novelty and findings of this Reimagining the Research Landscape Report, highlights of which I'm sure Kathy will cover next.Alright so before I turn it over to Kathy, there are some acronyms and contextual points I will quickly cover to ensure that all of our listeners out there are able to follow along:The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (or CIHR for short) is Canada's national funder of health research.In approximately 2010, CIHR established the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (or SPOR for short) to champion and support research that focuses on patient-identified priorities and outcomes and involves meaningful and active collaborations between patients, care partners and researchers (the latter of which is referred to as patient engagement in research). SPOR is recently undergoing a revamping, which they have called the SPOR Refresh, which involves among other things, consultations with the patient-oriented research community.The Patient Advisors Network (or PAN for short) is an independent, non-profit pan-Canadian organization comprised of patients and care partners that was asked by SPOR to carry out their own consultation activities to help inform the SPOR refresh.Ok so I hope that was more helpful than confusing, and I do encourage everyone out there to listen to last week's episode or check out our website (asperusual.substack.com) for today's interactive transcript that will help make things even more clear. And with that, over to you Kathy for your onePERsective!Kathy Smith:Thanks, Anna. It was really a pleasure to finally meet you in person, and I'm looking forward to many more partnerships as we move forward!This is a unique SPOR initiative that we're looking at today. The pan-Canadian Patient Advisors Network (PAN) was tasked to survey patients engaged in research experiences right across Canada. Alies Maybee and Donna Rubenstein, along with a patient steering committee, created and produced an innovative and precedent setting experience survey to inform decision makers of POR experiences. A whopping 262 patients engaged or wanting to become engaged in research responded. What set this survey apart from the many existing surveys is that the questions were asked and supplied solely by patients for patients. As Donna explained, “the questions we asked were not the cookie cutter, usual survey questions. We asked questions harvested from the perspectives of what patients identified themselves as important to understand.” As a result, they captured new data, opening the door to better understanding the patient perspectives engaging as a partner in research. Some examples of questions included:When you contributed, did you feel your voice was heard? Was your input valued and acted upon? Did you feel comfortable asking questions? Did you experience covert or unconscious bias for not being an academic? Did you feel you were making an impact or made an impact? Was your role integral, significant, or tokenistic? The answers did not surprise me. Overwhelmingly, a huge number of the 262 respondents felt that they were discriminated and disrespected because they were not academics. They did not feel their voices were heard as equals. The traditional research landscape does not presently equally value the voices of all its contributors. But in my experience, I believe they are fully on board to transforming that ecosystem by learning from us. I commend Alice and Donna and their team for capturing data to help shift this paradigm. Another strong survey finding that will come as no surprise, but is now supported with strong evidence, is that the research community is a closed shop that is not great at communicating with the public community. We need to change the research community's SOP, or standard operating policies and procedures, in order to change the research landscape. I really like the way Alies organized the findings at three levels of research environment to consider for changing: At the micro level, the research team most closely aligned with the patients engaged in research. At the meso level, administrators at universities and other research institutes. They are removed from the action, but are tasked by the research funder to manage the research grants. This is a major stumbling block and a bottleneck for researchers who want to and do engage patients in research — the time consuming, complicated, creeping barrage of administrative bureaucracy. At the macro level, the major research funders like the Canadian Institute for Health Research are next level removed from understanding and championing POR. Yet they are the ones who set out the research grant requirements, the timelines for deliverables, and the criteria for who should and who should not be funded. There are many other interesting and innovative suggestions for this transformation in the research ecosystem that can be found in the Patient Advisor Networks' pan-Canadian Patients Engaged in Research survey. If you'd like to check it out for yourself, the name of the report is Reimagining the Research Landscape. Personally speaking:The patience of time needed to build meaningful and respectful relationships is the cornerstone to successful patient engagement in research. Funders need to acknowledge its importance and to fund this fundamental first step. We must flatten the power dynamics between the patients and researchers by meeting people where they are at. Bring your authentic whole self to the table. Listen attentively and be open minded. We are all more than just our health condition. Nothing about me without me is the ticket for patients to rightfully participate in patient centered research.Anna:Thanks so much Kathy. One of the many things that I also enjoyed about Donna and Alies' episode was what I affectionately term “bonus content.” These were additional insights into important topics that flowed out of our conversations, such asexpected and unexpected benefits of patient-led research;tips for how to support patient partners in bringing diverse perspectives to engagement opportunities through the establishment of patient advisory councils comprised of large numbers of patient partners. This is an idea I've been looking to incorporate into my own research program and it was great to hear more about it in action.Until next time, please be sure to check out our website (asperusual.substack.com) for resources from today's episode, and an interactive transcript from this and previous episodes. Please also remember to subscribe to this podcast through our website or wherever it is that you download your podcast episodes. While you're there, if you take the time to leave us a positive review, it will help others find the podcast as well. Lastly, for those of you who'd like to contact me, please shoot me an email at anna.asperusual@gmail.com. Thanks so much for tuning in! Have a great couple of weeks! And until next time, let's keep working together to make patient engagement in research the standard or As PER Usual. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit asperusual.substack.com

In this conversation, Kieran Quinn, a general internist and palliative care clinician-scientist at Sinai Health in the Department of Medicine and at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and James Downer, a critical care and palliative care physician in Ottawa, discuss virtual end-of-life care during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://pcpcrc.ca/ - The Pan-Canadian Palliative Care Research Collaborative is a national network of researchers, healthcare providers, community stakeholders, and patient and caregiver partners who are passionate about palliative care research. Dr. Kieran Quinn is a General Internist and Palliative Care Clinician-Scientist at Sinai Health in the Department of Medicine and Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and an Adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). His research focuses on using advanced analytic methods and large administrative datasets to improve access and delivery of high-quality end-of-life care for patients with terminal noncancer illness, such as heart failure and dementia, and improving the recognition and care of people with post COVID-19 condition (long COVID). Dr. Quinn was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for Academic Excellence and the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He is co-lead of Canada's national research network on post COVID-19 condition and co-chair for the development of clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of post COVID-19 condition. He served as the Assistant Director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, the Ontario Public Health Emergencies Science Advisory Committee, and as an Expert Member of the Chief Science Advisor's National Task Force on the Post COVID-19 Condition. His early research success includes over $28 million in competitive grant funding and 7 CIHR grants as the nominated principal applicant. He has mentored 12 trainees who have published and won several awards for their work together. He has 103 peer-reviewed publications, including 52 as first author or senior author in high-impact journals such as JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, and BMJ. Dr. James Downar is a Critical Care and Palliative Care physician in Ottawa. He graduated from McGill Medical School and completed residency training in Internal Medicine, Critical Care, and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto. He has a Master's degree in Bioethics from the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. He is currently the Head of the Division of Palliative Care at the University of Ottawa and a Professor in the Department of Medicine. He is the chair of Palliative and End-of-Life Care at the University of Ottawa, the co-chair of the Pan-Canadian Palliative Care Research Collaborative, the chair of the Ethical Affairs committee of the Canadian Critical Care Society, and the co-chair of the Ontario Palliative Care Network's Provincial Education Steering Committee. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, has been principal investigator on more than 20 peer-reviewed grants, and is a former Associated Medical Services Phoenix Fellow. Dr. Downar also led several provincial and national efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was involved in planning for medication shortages for both critical care and palliative care and led the development of a critical care triage system for the event of major surge in critically ill patients His research interests include communication and decision-making for seriously ill patients and their families; Palliative Care for the Critically Ill; and Palliative Care for Noncancer Illnesses. http://amshealthcare.ca/

In this episode Ian speaks with Dr. Sandra Moll and they discuss why and how the peer support apps PeerOnCall (https://www.oncallapp.ca/) and Beyond Silence (https://www.beyondsilence.ca/) can provide game-changing early intervention for public safety personnel and healthcare workers. Early intervention can prevent a significant degree of harm and suffering. Sandra describes the design, implementation, and function of the apps. Currently the apps are in a research phase where they are researching "what works for whom in what context" to optimize efforts. In the podcast we review how peer support fits in the continuum of workplace mental health recommended by the WHO and why apps and the real people they connect can have a great impact. Peer support is one of many tools and having the right service at the right time can be critical to obtaining early support. PeerOnCall evaluation research was funded by Movember, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Beyond Silence research was funded by CIHR and PHAC. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Government of Canada.

In this conversation, Laura Sikstrom, a Medical Anthropologist and Project Scientist at The Krembil Center for Neuroinformatics at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, and an AMS Healthcare fellow in Compassion and AI, speaks with Sean Hill, the Director of The Krembil Center for Neuroinformatics, Senior Scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, and Professor at the University of Toronto. They discuss the meaning of fairness in mental health and the concepts used to support. Dr. Laura Sikstrom is also an assistant professor (status-only) in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Sikstrom also co-leads the Predictive Care Team at CAMH, which focuses on the intricate intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and mental health care. By integrating computational techniques with ethnographic insights, this team investigates the potential and challenges of incorporating AI into mental health practice, with a focus on compassionate and equitable care. Dr. Sikstrom received funding from AMS Healthcare, Google, SSHRC and CIHR and is also a nominee for the prestigious Governor General's Gold Award.  Dr. Sean Hill is also a computational neuroscientist with experience in building large-scale computational models of brain circuitry. The Centre collaborates with clinicians and researchers, employing neuroinformatics, artificial intelligence, and multi-scale modeling, to develop data-driven definitions of brain disorders, predict patient trajectories, and transform mental health care. Dr. Hill applies large-scale data integration, neuroinformatics, multiscale brain modeling and machine learning to improve our understanding and treatment of mental health disorders. The Centre's mandate is to accelerate global collaborations in brain science using the power of big data and brain modeling to fundamentally change how mental illness is understood. Resources: Sikstrom, Laura, Marta M. Maslej, Zoe Findlay, Gillian Strudwick, Katrina Hui, Juveria Zaheer, Sean L. Hill, and Daniel Z. Buchman. 2023. “Predictive Care: A Protocol for a Computational Ethnographic Approach to Building Fair Models of Inpatient Violence in Emergency Psychiatry.”  Sikstrom, Laura, Marta M. Maslej, Katrina Hui, Zoe Findlay, Daniel Z. Buchman, and Sean L. Hill. 2022. “Conceptualising Fairness: Three Pillars for Medical Algorithms and Health Equity.”  What is ‘AI' and what is it doing in psychiatry? A webinar presented at the RBC Patient & Family Learning Space, CAMH, November 2, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVUs-BnGIOU What happens to our brains when we get depressed? The Walrus, 2021, by Simon Lewsen. https://thewalrus.ca/what-happens-to-our-brains-when-we-get-depressed/

Meet our guestsDon Wood was a caregiver for his late wife Sherry who battled Stage 4 metastatic colon cancer for 3 years. He also lost his only brother Ken to leukemia as a young adult. Don focuses his time now when not golfing or skiing working and volunteering his time primarily in cancer research for several provincial and national health care organizations including the Canadian Cancer Society. He recently co-authored “Co-Creation of a patient engagement strategy in cancer research funding” with the Canadian Cancer Society.Judit Takacs (she/her) is the senior manager for partnerships and engagement in research at the Canadian Cancer Society. She was the staff lead in co-creating the patient engagement in research strategy and works to diversify voices in research and research funding. She holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia and a coffee from the local coffee shop – though the latter is not yet a formal degree.Dr. Michael S. Taccone is the proud Founder and CEO of Childhood Cancer Survivor Canada, Canada's first survivor-led organization which aims to unify and empower the growing childhood cancer survivor community through awareness, education, access to care and peer-support. By training, Michael is a senior resident of neurological surgery at the University of Ottawa and completed his PhD in the Surgeon-Scientist Training Program at the University of Toronto. Himself a survivor of childhood cancer, Michael merges his experiences as a patient advocate, cancer researcher and junior physician to influence policy, research and practice for children and young people living with and beyond cancer in Canada. As a patient partner and co-investigator, Michael contributes to several CIHR-funded AYA and childhood cancer national research programs, is an acting co-chair of the Integrated AfterCare Advisory Council with the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario, and informs strategic development and capacity building for patient-engagement initiatives at Sick Kids Hospital, the Canadian Cancer Society and Ontario Health.Suzanne Bays has been the caregiver for her father and husband, both of whom died from metastatic colon cancer. She spent 2019 as a Fellow at Harvard's Advanced Leadership Initiative, where her Capstone Project focused on improving the lives of those with Advanced Cancer. She continues this work with the Canadian Cancer Society as a Patient Advocate, helping create action-oriented strategies to impact the lives of those touched by cancer. She is a co-author of the articles “Co-Creation of a Patient Engagement Strategy in Cancer Research Funding” as well as “Supporting People and their Caregivers Living with Advanced Cancer: From Individual Experience to a National Interdisciplinary Program”. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit asperusual.substack.com

Everyone knows empathy is a vital skill to master when it comes to leadership, but what tactics do established leaders use to balance humanity and expectation? What are the 3 H's to grounding your leadership skills. In this episode, Dr. Danika Goosney answers these questions and more. What You'll Learn: 1. Using data to advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion in the STEM field. 2. The 3 grounding H's of leadership: humanity, humility and humor. 3. Linking the connection between empathy and trust. 4. Conducting an energy audit to observe work trends and assess priorities. 5. Balancing transparency, oversharing, authenticity and professionalism. 6. Reframing situations from a different lens to paint the whole picture. 7. What actually makes for a good mentor. 8. Maximizing impact with data by telling a good story and knowing the audience. 9. 3 ways to maintain resilience as an individual and a leader. Who is Danika? Dr. Danika Goosney, appointed as Vice-President at NSERC in 2019, holds a first-class honors Bachelor of Science and a PhD from the University of British Columbia, where she earned the Governor General's Gold Medal. With a background in microbiology and immunology, she pursued postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute before contributing to Vancouver-based biotech firms. Over nearly a decade at CIHR and later at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, she played pivotal roles in research, knowledge translation, and ethics. Dr. Goosney is nationally recognized for her positive leadership in equity, diversity, and inclusion in STEM, advocating for open science and science literacy, while also passionately mentoring those seeking careers in science policy and public service. She now serves as Director and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Museum of Nature. Follow Danika: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danika-goosney-ph-d-a361b42/ More of Do Good to Lead Well: Website: https://craigdowden.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigdowden/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/craig-dowden/message

CSAM (Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine) has extended an invitation to our very own Dr. Wip to present their 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award to his mentor, Dr. Shelby. Dr. Wip elucidates the profound influence and enduring impact that Dr. Shelby has had on his journey. Dr. Peter Selby is a Clinician Scientist and Senior Medical Consultant at CAMH. He is the Interim Vice-Chair of Research for the Department of Family and Community Medicine and holds the Dr. Barnett & Beverley Giblon Professorship in Family Medicine Research at the University of Toronto. He is a Clinician Scientist and Director of the Mental Health and Addictions Division in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. He is also a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is also a full member of the School of Graduate Studies through the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto. Areas of Research Dr. Selby's research focus is innovative methods to understand and treat addictive behaviours and their comorbidities. He also uses technology to combine clinical medicine and public health methods to scale up and test health interventions. His cohort of 280,000+ treated smokers in Ontario is an example. His most recent program of research utilizes a Learning Health Systems approach to investigate how technology enabled collaborative care can enhance the delivery of evidence-based interventions to the patient while providing a more satisfying experience of care for both patient and provider. Dr. Selby has received grant funding totaling over 100 million dollars from CIHR, NIH, and Ministry of Health, and has published 38 research reports prepared for the government. Dr. Selby mentors residents and faculty from a variety of disciplines. He is a sought after speaker for various topics including addictive disorders, motivational interviewing, and health behavior change at individual and system levels. Publications Dr. Selby has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, 37 books or book chapters, and 125 international presentations. https://csamconference.org/ Featuring addiction psychiatrist Dr. Wiplove (Wip) Lamba, addictions case manager and former addict Jean-Paul (JP) Michael, along with their guests discuss all things related to substance use, addiction, addiction medicine, psychotherapy, harm reduction, treatment and recovery. Wip and JP share their motivation, curiosity, and passion for their craft. JP works on a daily basis in a renown inner city hospital in Canada's largest city. This work is separate from Wiplove's clinical and academic work. The content should not be taken as direct medical advice or clinical instruction.

Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe is back for a second episode and we chat about the influence of probiotics and antibiotics on the gut microbiome. Could there be missing microbes contributing to food intolerances? And why researching the microbiomes of honey bees is helping our understanding of their survivability and social behaviors.   Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of London, and her PhD in Molecular Microbiology through an industrial partnership with Public Health England. Emma started her faculty career at the University of Calgary in 2005, with a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through CAG/AstraZeneca and CIHR, to study the normal microbes of the human gut. In particular, she was among the few that focused on trying to culture these ‘unculturable' microbes in order to better understand their biology. To do this, she developed a model gut system - the Robogut - to emulate the conditions of the human gut and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally. Emma moved her lab to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recipient of several Canadian Foundation for Innovation Awards that have allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. This has been boosted by the award of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbiome Function and Host Interactions. Emma's research focuses are very broad, although they are all united under the banner of microbial culture and the microbiome. She has current projects focused on the human gut microbiome, on colorectal cancer, diabetes, xenobiotic metabolism, and 'missing microbes'. More recently Emma has entered the fascinating realm of the insect gut microbiome - specifically the microbes that colonize bees!

What exactly is the best way to engage patients in a healthcare research project? Well, it's hard to say definitively. Funders like CIHR often require patient involvement, but very little direction is provided beyond general frameworks and guiding principles. Often project teams just have to sort things out on their own. So we were curious to find out how this one particular healthcare research project handled it.  The details of the project are not really what this episode is about. Instead, our intention is to showcase a number of different perspectives about the use of patient partners within a federally funded healthcare research project. You're going to hear from two of the project's researchers (PI Dr. Noah Ivers and Celia Laur), two patient partners (Barbara Sklar and Michael Strange) - they actually call themselves Lived Experience Advisors, or LEAs - and our very own Emily Nicholas Angl, who helped to bridge communication between the two groups. In this episode: 00:17 Why Jen is hosting solo 01:06 About this research project 02:05 What's an ”innovative clinical trial”? 04:00 Dr. Noah Ivers' research objectives 06:15 Why this project was complex 09:34 Should patient partners do more technical work? 10:42 What are we asking patients to do? 13:20 Barbara: Engaging patients is like the Wild West! 15:57 Michael: Sharing my experience may help someone 18:03 Barbara: Engaged patients are like liaisons 20:01 Patients should do what interests them 21:28 Reflecting on constraints 22:29 Barbara: Patient advisors should not be ”partners” 24:41 Figuring things out as they go 25:44 What did the Advisors actually do? 30:34 Michael: Opioids are not inherently bad 32:24 Barbara: I get a lot of benefit from being an LEA 35:03 Reflections on Emily's role, as Lead Advisor 38:08 Who decides what's relevant (re patient input)? 39:05 Why research teams might want a Lead Advisor 40:29 Are there areas where patient input is less relevant? 43:01 Jennifer interviews Emily! 01:07:35 Ending and credits About the research project: The project (the results of which are not yet published) and is an "innovative clinical trial", which means that it uses methods alternative to more traditional randomized controlled trials. The research had two streams, both related to primary care - one focused on prescribing opioids, and one on prescribing antibiotics. Both of these are areas where there can be serious impacts at the individual patient level, but also in terms of public health more broadly. And particularly with opioids,. defining exactly what appropriate prescribing looks like is really tricky. And primary care physicians aren't always aware of, or maybe just aren't following, the most recent evidence-based guidelines. So this project explored if and how some specific interventions could shift prescribing behavior towards established best practices. We will continue to update the links on our website as publications and further information becomes available.  [download transcript] ------------------------------ Research project information: Project lay summary (PDF) Patient Partner Orientation presentation (PDF) Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Innovative Clinical Trials Initiative (iCT) Research background information and context: The Opioid Chapters: 11 stories that show how complex the crisis is Video: Improving antibiotic prescribing by reducing antibiotic use, duration of therapy and drug costs Webinar: Advancing Audit and Feedback Science and Antibiotic Stewardship in Primary Care Guest links: Dr. Noah Ivers profile Dr. Noah Ivers on twitter Celia Laur PhD profile Celia Laur on twitter Previous episodes featuring patient partner views: Patient-Oriented to Patient-Partnered: Aspirations, Implications, Challenges October 19, 2021 Policy Development in a Pandemic: is there a Role for Patient Partners? With Julie Drury and Christa Haanstra October 5, 2020 Reflections on Engagement, with Lorraine, Maureen, Keith and Jess August 30, 2020 Expertise Part 2, with Francine Buchanan June 16, 2020

Dr Paul L. Vasey is Professor and Board of Governors Research Chair in Culture, Organization and Society at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. His research has focused on understanding the development, evolution and psychobiology of gender diversity and sexual orientation. He has studied female homosexual behavior in Japanese monkeys for the past 33 years. This work has been described as “transformative” by leading scholars in the field. For 19 years, he has conducted annual fieldwork in Samoa, a culture where feminine same-sex attracted males are identified as a “third” gender, called fa'afafine, that is distinct from cisgender men and women. In 2015, Dr. Vasey established another fieldsite in the Istmo region of Oaxaca, Mexico. In this area, the indigenous Zapotec people recognize feminine same-sex attracted males as a third gender called, muxe. This work has been complemented by his long-term research on cisgender gay men in Canada and Japan. His cross-cultural research has been described by external reviewers as “cutting-edge” and “stunningly original.” Vasey is one of only a handful Canadian scholars to receive research grants from NSERC, CIHR and SSHRC, as well as NIH.  His research has been reported on in hundreds of newspapers and magazines worldwide including the New York Times, Oprah, Playboy, National Geographic and TIME. He has been interviewed on camera for several television documentaries, most recently by the American journalist Katie Couric, for the National Geographic documentary, Gender Revolution, in which he spoke about the special role fa'afafine play in promoting the well-being of their families.    Dr Vasey at the University of Lethbridge: https://people.uleth.ca/~paul.vasey/PLV/home.html   Lecture at the University of Lethbridge: https://youtu.be/hNyy3g2yVfs   ************* Support our work:  https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/GDAlliance?country.x=CA&locale.x=en_US   For more information: https://www.genderdysphoriaalliance.com

Parenting a Child with a Neurodevelopmental DisorderPeter L Rosenbaum, Monika Novak-PavlicWatch the video-cast at the ResearchWorks Podcast YouTube Channel!https://youtu.be/MUfMh5lYk_IFree PMC articleAbstractPurpose of review: Traditional thinking and focus in 'childhood disability' have been on the child with the impairment - with the imperative to make the right diagnosis and find the right treatments. The implicit if not direct expectation was that interventions should aim to 'fix' the problems. Professionals have led the processes of investigation and management planning, with parents expected to 'comply' with professionals' recommendations. Much less attention has been paid to parents' perspectives or their wellbeing.Recent findings: In the past two decades, we have seen a sea change in our conceptualizations of childhood disability. The WHO's framework for health (the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (aka ICF)) and CanChild's 'F-words for Child Development' inform modern thinking and action. We now recognize the family as the unit of interest, with parents' voices an essential element of all aspects of management. The goals of intervention are built around the F-words ideas of function, family, fun, friendships, fitness and future.Summary: There has been world-wide uptake of the F-words concepts, with increasing evidence of the impact of these ideas on parents and professionals alike. There are important implications of these developments on the structure, processes and content of services for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, their families and the services designed to support them.Keywords: Child and family development; Childhood disability; F-words in child development; Family wellbeing; ICF.© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.Conflict of interest statementConflict of InterestIn this article, Peter Rosenbaum and Monika Novak-Pavlic present and discuss CanChild's F-words for Child Development and describe the CIHR-funded ENVISAGE study. Dr. Rosenbaum is the lead author of the original F-words paper that reported these concepts. All the F-words materials discussed in this paper are available for free on the authors' website: www.canchild.ca/f-words. ENVISAGE is a research study underway as this paper was being written, and there are no financial implications of this work. Peter Rosenbaum and Monika Novak-Pavlic declare no conflicts of interest relevant to this manuscript.

In this episode, we sit down and chat with Dr. Colleen Dell, an award winning researcher who focuses on animal assisted therapy and mental health research. Colleen and her animal companions have gone into hospitals, prisons, COVID vaccination clinics and many other places to help humans with their health and well-being. The therapy dogs seem to know just what we humans need, and are able to comfort us, love us, and support us in so many ways. Colleen shares some beautiful stories about the impact that dogs have made on the lives of prisoners, people who were scared of getting vaccine injections, etc. She shares how emotionally intelligent and sentient these dogs can be, knowing exactly what people need, how to connect with them, and how to give them love and comfort.  We talk about how she got started in the field of animal assisted intervention research, some of the work that her and the dogs have done together, animal consciousness, the human-animal bond and relationship, and interspecies communication. She also tells us about a randomized control trial (the first of its kind!) where they took dogs into the ER of a hospital and observed the outcomes. This study has been downloaded over 10,000 times! ---Colleen Anne Dell (PhD) was appointed the Centennial Enhancement Chair in One Health and Wellness at the University of Saskatchewan in 2016 for a five year term, with a focus on addiction and mental health. Her position was renewed for a second five year term in 2021. Dr. Dell has a Google Scholar h-index of 30. She has been awarded $5.4 million as a Principal Investigator in CIHR grants alone, and an additional $20.3 million as a co-Investigator and Supervisor. As a Professor, she has published over 85 innovative peer-reviewed journal articles, with lead authorship in over half, contributed over two dozen book chapters, and 57 technical reports.  Dr. Dell is a public sociologist and Professor in the Department of Sociology, with an Associate appointment in the School of Public Health. She is also a Senior Research Associate with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, Canada's national non-governmental addictions agency. Dr. Dell is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University and a past Research Associate with the Indigenous Peoples' Health Research Centre. She is a 2013 graduate of the Canine Behaviour Psychology Academy, Extreme K-9 Professional Dog Training school, in Illinois, USA and completed a certificate course in animal assisted therapy and activities at Harcum College in 2014. In 2020 she completed the Nonhuman Nature Research Methods course at the Kerulos Centre for Nonviolence. She has thousands of hours of practice providing community-based animal assisted intervention (AAI) services since 2013, and has been a committed community volunteer in the areas of social justice, inclusion and equity since 1993. Find out more about Colleen at https://colleendell.com/

Kim McGrail is the Scientific Director of Health Data Research Network, a CIHR funded initiative whose work in the health data space has implications for, well, everyone living in Canada. And they're keen to involve the public not just in getting input, but in providing guidance into key decisions.  HDRN's work is both technical and somewhat conceptual: their aim is to support researchers to better access health data for research from multiple sources and regions, while respecting local, regional and Indigenous rights, cultural practices and laws. Public engagement in this context may seem straightforward, but it's hardly so. In this episode, we talk through some of HDRN's challenges and opportunities related to understanding public concerns related to the collection, use and sharing of health data.  Although we touch on some of the operational and technical details of HDRN's work, our primary focus is on the use of deliberation as an engagement approach.  And how it's difficult to talk about engagement at a pan-Canadian level without also considering democratic ideals and how we might navigate living together as a diverse society. ----------------- This series is supported by the Public Engagement in Health Policy project, which promotes research, critical reflection and dialogue about engagement issues that have a health and health policy focus. Learn more about this Future of Canada project at engagementinhealthpolicy.ca [download transcript]   Guest links: Kim McGrail on twitter Kim McGrail's profile Mentioned in this episode: Health Data Research Network HDRN Public Advisory Council Paris Citizens' Assembly

In this episode of the Voice Epilepsy™ podcast, BC Epilepsy Society Executive Director, Deirdre Syms, is joined by Dr. Judy Illes to discuss Seizing Hope - High Tech Journeys in Pediatric Epilepsy, a mini-documentary by Neuroethics Canada. Seizing Hope is a mini-documentary that aims to ask the question “Can new technology bring hope to children who have drug-resistant epilepsy?” and documents the stories of four Canadian families in their journey to learn, understand, and explore the ethical trade-offs and decision-making values around modern technology for the brain. These families guide viewers through their journey towards hope, trust, and empowerment in times of darkness for a better quality of life for their children who have drug-resistant epilepsy. For more information on Seizing Hope, please visit https://www.seizinghopefilm.com/. About our Guest: Dr. Illes is Professor of Neurology, Distinguished University Scholar, and UBC Distinguished Professor in Neuroethics. She is the Director of Neuroethics Canada, and faculty in the Centre for Brain Health and at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. In addition to her primary appointment in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC, Dr. Illes holds associate appointments in Population and Public Health and in Journalism at UBC, and in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, USA. She is the Vice Chair of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Advisory Board of the Institute on Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction, Director-at-Large of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and co-Lead of the Canadian Brain Research Strategy (www.canadianbrain.ca). She served as Vice Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics of CIHR from 2013-2021. Dr. Illes held the Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics from 2007-2021. She received her PhD in Hearing and Speech Sciences, and in Neuropsychology at Stanford University, and is a pioneer of the field of neuroethics formally established in early 2000. Dr. Illes received the Order of Canada, one of the country's highest awards for citizens, in 2017. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada (Division of Life Sciences), and the American Association of Advancement of Science (AAAS, Division of Neuroscience) in 2012.  She is also an elected member of the International Women's Forum, an organization of more than 7000 women leaders around the world. Her latest books, a series on Developments in Neuroethics and Bioethics, feature pain, global mental health, do-it-yourself brain devices, and neuro-law. She writes frequently for the Vancouver Sun and Canada's The Conversation Canada, and hosts community outreach about challenging ethical problems involving biomedicine and the brain throughout BC and across the country. For more information on Neuroethics Canada, please visit http://www.neuroethicscanada.ca. You can also view infographics on epilepsy created by Neuroethics Canada at https://neuroethics.med.ubc.ca/res/nih-epilepsy-resources/.

Dr. Kevin Bardosh is the lead author of the paper: "The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good". Dr. Kevin Bardosh (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is an applied medical anthropologist and implementation scientist focused on using social science and community engagement to improve public health delivery and policy. Most of his work, across more than 20 countries, has focused on the epidemiology and control of human, animal and vector-borne infectious disease. Current applied public health projects (as of early-2020) include the control of: lymphatic filariasis (Nepal, India), malaria (Haiti), cholera and Ebola (Democratic Republic of Congo), sleeping sickness (Uganda), chronic kidney disease (Ecuador) and onchocerciasis (Benin). Kevin has a strong commitment to capacity building, interdisciplinary science, operational research, and health system strengthening. He has (co) authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications, edited two books and held positions in departments of anthropology, global health, development studies, veterinary and environmental sciences, and epidemiology. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and numerous workshops and trainings. Current and past research has been funded by: Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, DFID, EU, NIH, UNICEF, USAID, TDR, CIHR, NERC, ACIAR, RTI and Carter Center. His recently edited book, Locating Zika: Social Change and Governance in an Age of Mosquito Pandemics (Routledge, 2019) explores the control of Aedes-borne diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dr. Kevin Bardosh is the lead author of the paper: "The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good" Dr. Kevin Bardosh (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is an applied medical anthropologist and implementation scientist focused on using social science and community engagement to improve public health delivery and policy. Most of his work, across more than 20 countries, has focused on the epidemiology and control of human, animal and vector-borne infectious disease. Current applied public health projects (as of early-2020) include the control of: lymphatic filariasis (Nepal, India), malaria (Haiti), cholera and Ebola (Democratic Republic of Congo), sleeping sickness (Uganda), chronic kidney disease (Ecuador) and onchocerciasis (Benin). Kevin has a strong commitment to capacity building, interdisciplinary science, operational research, and health system strengthening. He has (co) authored >30 peer-reviewed publications, edited two books and held positions in departments of anthropology, global health, development studies, veterinary and environmental sciences, and epidemiology. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and numerous workshops and trainings. Current and past research has been funded by: Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, DFID, EU, NIH, UNICEF, USAID, TDR, CIHR, NERC, ACIAR, RTI and Carter Center. His recently edited book, Locating Zika: Social Change and Governance in an Age of Mosquito Pandemics (Routledge, 2019) explores the control of Aedes-borne diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean.

On this episode we are delighted to be joined by Dr Brunah Schall, post-doctoral researcher at Fiocruz Minas in Brazil, and Dr Julia Smith, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. We hear from our speakers about the gendered dynamics of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on research which has been conducted in Brazil and Canada as part of the multi-country Gender and Covid-19 project.   We cover topics including:   The economic impact of the pandemic on women, who took on a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work and took longer to re-enter the workforce   Female health workers' experiences of racism, misogyny, stigma and violence on the frontline  How research from the Gender and Covid-19 project is influencing policy across countries Dr Brunah Schall Postdoc, Fiocruz Minas Brunah is a biologist with a PhD in Sociology from Brazil. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Fiocruz Minas, working on projects on gender and health, especially the international project Gender and Covid-19, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research focuses on women from vulnerable settings in urban and rural communities in Brazil, highlighting the effects of the pandemic in their livelihoods, food security and overall health with the purpose of connecting them with policy makers.     https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PAC00487_Gender-Covid-19-Brazil-food-insecurity-English.pdf (https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/PAC00487_Gender-Covid-19-Brazil-food-insecurity-English.pdf)  https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/PAC00519_Gender-Covid-19-Health-Workers-Brazil-1.pdf (https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/PAC00519_Gender-Covid-19-Health-Workers-Brazil-1.pdf)  https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/gender-and-race-on-the-frontline.pdf (https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/gender-and-race-on-the-frontline.pdf)  https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/resources/the-pandemic-response-plan-in-brazil-must-include-a-critical-perspective-on-gender-and-race-2/ (https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/resources/the-pandemic-response-plan-in-brazil-must-include-a-critical-perspective-on-gender-and-race-2/)  https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/editorial/water-is-life-the-struggle-of-quilombola-women-for-access-to-water-in-the-midst-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-brazil/ (https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/editorial/water-is-life-the-struggle-of-quilombola-women-for-access-to-water-in-the-midst-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-brazil/)  Dr Julia Smith Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University Dr Julia Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She has a PhD in Social and International Studies from the University of Bradford, where she also completed her Masters of Arts as a Rotary World Peace Fellow. Her research interests centre on gender-based policy analysis of health crises, commercial and political determinants of health, feminist theory and community-based research. She is currently a Principal Investigator on the https://www.sfu.ca/fhs/gendercovid.html (Gender and COVID-19 Research Project), which is conducting gender-based analysis of the response to COVID-19 in multiple countries and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Canadian Institutes for Health Research. She has also led research on the intersections of health and development, funded by SSHRC, and contributed to the Global Tobacco Control Project at SFU, funded by CIHR and the US National Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Smith has taught classes in both the Faculty of Health Sciences and Department of Political Science at SFU. She is a board member of Women Transforming Cities, volunteers with Mosaic, and has worked with community-based...

Dr. Michael J. Strong is the President of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), an organization pursuing equitable health outcomes for Canadians powered by excellence in research. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, Dr. Strong sits down with us to chat about:◼️ Demystifying scientists;◼️ Important traits for leadership in health research;◼️ Shifting health research priorities during the pandemic;◼️ Importance of learning health systems; and ◼️ Knowledge mobilization integrated into the research processPodcast Guest◼️ Dr. Michael J. Strong, MD, FRCPC, FAAN, FCAHS Podcast Hosts◼️ Gordon Thane, BMSc, MPH, PMP®◼️ Leshawn Benedict, MPH, MSc, PMP®References for Our Discussion◼️ Canadian Institutes of Health Research◼️ On the Mic with Mike PodcastSubscribe to the NewsletterWhat if there was an easy way to receive timely information about public health and global health right to your inbox? Subscribe to the newsletter to stay in the loop about the latest news, live events, jobs, and professional development opportunities. Subscribe to ensure you don't miss out: https://thepublichealthinsight.com/subscribe/.Leave Us a RatingIf you enjoy our podcasts, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and spread the word to your friends to help us get discovered by more people.Teaching MaterialsIf you are an educator interested in using any of our podcast material in your teaching material, feel free to do so or reach out through at thepublichealthinsight@gmail.com. We'd also be happy to connect regarding any guest lecture opportunities. Learn more about our previous collaborations.Support the show

From insects and birds, to the underwater world, Juan Ianowski's fascination with the natural world began early.   As a biologist, he was drawn to physiological processes, later scrutinizing the kidneys of insects, whose epithelial cells behave in similar ways to those in human lungs.   By 2015, Ianowski's research was focused on the pathophysiology of lung cells, and the nerve channels controlling them. He and his collaborators were working with the Canadian Light Source, to get a more accurate picture of the tiny cells involved.   But Ianowski had a nagging feeling he was missing the bigger picture.    "I had a very large gap in my life," said Ianowski. "I had never seen a patient."   That summer, he fired off an e-mail to Dr. Julian Tam, who'd just moved into a new position as the director of Saskatchewan's adult Cystic Fibrosis clinic.   They agreed to go for coffee.   Tam already knew Saskatoon, after spending his residency in internal medicine here, followed by a fellowship in Respirology.   "I liked that I could reason out, based on various principles, how things worked in our lungs," said Tam. "There were a few patients that I looked after with CF fairly early on in my training, and I think they really left a mark on me.”   When they met, Tam found Ianowski's work interesting, but saw 'a bit of a disconnect' between the research and his day-to-day practice.  Within months, the respirologist asked Ianowski to shadow him during patient visits.   Most CF patients take dozens of pills each day, as well inhaling nebulized saline solutions designed to loosen mucous, and reduce infections.      “It can be very time-consuming and we would love for their treatments to be as efficacious as possible,” said Tam.   To figure out how, and why the saline solution worked — and what could make it more potent, Tam and Ianowski became collaborators on numerous projects supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Information, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation, and Cystic Fibrosis Canada.   With the help of colleagues at the Canadian Light Source and the  Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture, they started finding answers by doing mass spectrometry in real time, in a herd of pigs genetically modified to carry the gene for Cystic Fibrosis.   “This is pretty hard because the amount of fluid that we are looking for is very small. So it's about the width of a human hair,” said Ianowski.    That work led to numerous publications, and to the University of Saskatchewan's application for a patent for a better inhaled treatment to treat CF lung disease.   Now, Tam and Ianowski also looking at gastrointestinal disease in CF patients, and TRIKAFTA — an innovative class of drugs that's effective for most — but not all — people with the disease.   Today, they're testing those drugs in the lab to gain a detailed understanding of the effects they produce. A recent CIHR grant will help them better understand the basic epithelia of the lungs. They're also looking for ways to better treat CF patients who cannot tolerate TRIKAFTA treatments.   “Our hope is that some of our work gives us a better understanding of the disease process,” said Tam, as he and Ianowski aim for better treatments, by figuring out which lung cells to target, and where.

This week on Finding Your Bliss, we have a show devoted to preserving fertility, even in the face of cancer. Life Coach Judy Librach sits down with Oncofertility specialist Dr. Karen Glass from the CReATe Fertility Centre, and also with a very happy patient who was able to freeze her embryos before cancer treatment and is now pregnant with her first child! Jessica was diagnosed with breast cancer at 33-years old and was told she needed to have surgery and treatment to remove it. After surgery, she was sent to the CReATe Fertility Clinic in Toronto to have her eggs retrieved as the cancer treatment could have hurt her ovarian reserve. She went to see Dr. Karen Glass at the CReATe Fertility Centre, and they decided to freeze her embryos instead of her eggs. As she puts it,

Research has shown that children who have obesity in puberty are at a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life. Scientists like Dr. Vincent Poitout are hoping to learn why this happens and ways we can prevent it. His work in this area was recently funded by Diabetes Canada and CIHR. Dr. Poitout is the director of research at the University of Montreal Health Centre and a professor at the University of Montreal.

In this episode we are joined by Dr Vicky Tagalakis and Dr Marc Carrier, two of the authors of a recently published review paper entitled Treatment Algorithm in Cancer-Associated Thrombosis: Updated Canadian Expert Consensus. The paper was published in Current Oncology (Curr. Oncol. 2021, 28, 5434–5451. https://www.mdpi.com/1718-7729/28/6/453). The authors speak about why this update was undertaken and discuss many of the challenging scenarios encountered with this patient group and the recommendations for managing them. Join us for this insightful discussion that can help you in managing patients with cancer at risk of thrombosis.Dr. Vicky Tagalakis, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at McGill University and an attending in the Department of Medicine of the Jewish General Hospital. She is Director of the Division of General Internal Medicine at McGill University. She is a Research Scientist in the Centre of Epidemiology and Community of Studies, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, Jewish General Hospital. She holds several peer-reviewed grants. She is Co-Lead of the Quality Improvement Platform of CanVECTOR), a CIHR funded national research network on venous thromboembolism (VTE).Dr. Marc Carrier, is the Head of the Division of Hematology at The Ottawa Hospital, a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medicine and Senior Scientist in the Clinical Epidemiology Program of The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He holds a Tier 1 Research Chair in Venous Thromboembolism and Cancer from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Carrier is also president of Thrombosis Canada.Related Thrombosis Canada resources:Downloadable PDF Algorithm: https://thrombosiscanada.ca/cat-treatment-algorithm-2021/DOAC Drug-Drug-Interaction tool: Download HereThrombosis Canada Cancer-associated Thrombosis (CAT) Clinical Guide: Download HereThrombosis Canada Clinical Guides: Visit HereFor other relevant resources, education programs and patient materials visit https://thrombosiscanada.caSupport the showhttps://thrombosiscanada.caTake a look at our healthcare professional and patient resources, videos and publications on thrombosis from the expert members of Thrombosis Canada

ATS 2022 starts May 13. Register today: conference.thoracic.orgGuestSarah Viehbeck, PhDAssociate Vice President, Research Programs - Strategy at CIHR. HostSana Siddiqui, PhDon behalf of the Respiratory Structure & Function Assembly 

It's more important than ever to ground healing work with expertise, careful research, and study. Otherwise, it's basically just cheerleading. This is why I brought on one of Canada's best social psychologists, Lara Aknin. Lara's work centers on not just what makes people happy, but what keeps them happy: gratitude, reminding yourself and others of shared connections and community, and more. Obviously, the pandemic shut out a lot of ways we cultivate connection and community—at least physically. So I wanted Lara to share some scientific grounding on how covid has affected anxiety and depression rates, stress levels, and mental resiliency in general. Lara Beth Aknin is a Canadian social psychologist. She is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University and a Distinguished University Professor. After earning her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia, Aknin joined the faculty of psychology at Simon Fraser University in 2012. That year, she published Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children with J. Kiley Hamlin and Elizabeth Dunn, which supported the idea that humans may have evolved to find giving rewarding. In 2014, Lara and her colleagues Michael Norton and Elizabeth Dunn co-published a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and CIHR funded review of whether spending money had a positive effect on people's happiness. The following year, her contributions to the field of social psychology earned her the President's New Researcher Award from the Canadian Psychological Association and a fellowship at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. By 2019, she received an SSHRC grant for her project, Can Repeated and Reflective Giving Nurture Canada's Next Generation of Philanthropists? She was also honored by the university for her research and contributions to social Psychology with the title of Distinguished SFU Professor. During the pandemic, she has served as Chair of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Task Force of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. She also serves as an associate editor of the World Happiness Report. Connect with Lara: -Website: https://www.sfu.ca/psychology/about/people/profiles/laknin.html -Twitter: https://twitter.com/lbaknin -Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6a21v6wAAAAJ     See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Glenn Landry has studied circadian rhythms and sleep for over 20 years. He completed his graduate research at Simon Fraser University, examining circadian mechanisms of entrainment, supervised by Dr. Ralph Mistlberger and supported by grants from MSFHR and NSERC. He then focused his research efforts on sleep, aging, and cognition as a CIHR postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose's Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at UBC. His research there explored age-related changes in sleep duration, efficiency, and architecture that contribute to or accelerate cognitive decline in older adults. As an academic, Glenn's goal was to develop chronotherapeutic interventions capable of delaying cognitive decline in older adults, with the objective of improving quality of life, productivity, and extending capacity for independent living. Now in private practice, Glenn is a sleep coach. He works with older adults, shift workers, and families to improve physical and mental health through better sleep quality by translating sleep science into practical interventions tailored to each client. https://www.elitesleep.ca/ Discount Offer: 1.  https://education.elitesleep.ca/courses/surviving-shift-work 2. Create a new account 3. At the checkout, enter the coupon code: MULTIPLECALLS-2021 4. Make sure to click the Apply button to activate your code

Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe, a foremost researcher on the human microbiome joins the Two Nobodys for a fascinating conversation. Emma shares what we do and do not know about the microbiome, some of the characteristics of a healthy microbiome, how it may have changed over history, the effects of COVID, and what foods may be beneficial. Dr. Emma Allen Vercoe's research page: https://www.uoguelph.ca/mcb/people/dr-emma-allen-vercoe Twitter: @EmmaAllenVercoe -- Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of London, and her PhD in Molecular Microbiology through an industrial partnership with Public Health England. Dr. Allen-Vercoe started her faculty career at the University of Calgary in 2005, with a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through CAG/AstraZeneca and CIHR, to study the normal microbes of the human gut.  In particular, she was among the few that focused on trying to culture these ‘unculturable' microbes in order to better understand their biology.  To do this, she developed a model gut system to emulate the conditions of the human gut and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally.   Dr. Allen-Vercoe moved her lab to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recipient of several Canadian Foundation for Innovation Awards that has allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. This has been recently boosted by the award of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbiome Function and Host Interactions .  In 2013, Dr. Allen-Vercoe co-founded NuBiyota, a research spin-off company that aims to create therapeutic ecosystems as biologic drugs, on a commercial scale.  The research enterprise for this company is also based in Guelph. 

Steven Hoffman, Professor at York University and Scientific Director of the CIHR's Institute of Population & Public Health, talks to Vardit Ravitsky about the challenges of creating public policy during the COVID-19 pandemic and how we can better prepare for the next one. Steven Hoffman, professeur à l'Université York et directeur scientifique de l'Institut de la santé publique et des populations à l'IRSC, discute avec Vardit Ravitsky des défis reliés à la création de politiques publiques en pleine pandémie et de quelques pistes à explorer pour mieux se préparer à affronter la prochaine.

Many factors contribute to children's pain being under estimated, under-recognized and inadequately treated. Kathryn Birnie, PhD shares her work identifying the top priorities essential for improvement in pediatric pain management. Join me in this episode as she shares her patient-oriented research which includes them in priority setting and recognizing the areas where we need to focus on.  Her work is grounded in empowering the disempowered; the pediatric pain patients and their caregivers, working alongside and in concert with the clinicians, making the small and big shifts in doing so especially when there is a power differential.  Dr Birnie discusses the top 10 priorities identified in pediatric pain management, how they went about doing so, especially having to distill them down to 10 from >500 identified at the start. She shares which one or ones of them should be prioritized to the top of the line, how that is relevant to each one of us caring for children, and what surprising elements, perspectives or shifts they encountered in the course of this work. We also explore her role as the Assistant Scientific Director of Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP), a knowledge mobilization initiative and how healthcare professionals and patients and families can participate in and benefit from SKIP.   Dr. Birnie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at the University of Calgary and a clinical psychologist at Alberta Children's Hospital.   Tune in to learn more about how she is contributing to shaping pain research, education and clinical  care for kids with pain and how that influences us as healthcare professionals in our day to day work!   Takeaways In This Episode How Dr. Birnie got involved in pediatric pain management and what fueled the work she's doing right now Dr. Birnie shares behind the scenes of her research, Partnering for Pain, and its design involving patients and families alongside the clinicians and other stakeholders in improving pain care of children.    The top 10 priorities in pediatric pain that Dr. Birnie and partners found  What priorities we should be focusing on The gaps that various stakeholders need to be aware of in managing children's pain Work that SKIP is doing to advance pediatric pain care How institutions or healthcare professionals can be the beneficiaries of SKIP and how they may contribute to this important work Dr. Birnie's words of advice to healthcare professionals taking care of children with pain    Links  Kathryn Birnie, PhD Connect with Dr. Birnie -  Linkedin   Twitter @katebirnie Partnering for Pain Partnering for Pain Video Keeping Up with Today - Dr Christine Chamber's Podcast There's an App for that - Dr Jennifer Stinson's Podcast episode Making Pediatric Pain Matter - Dr Christopher Eccleston's podcast Episode Role of Epigenetics in Post-surgical Pain - Dr. Vidya Chidambaran's podcast episode Manage Memory, Manage Pain - Dr Melanie Noel's podcast episode Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) Clinicians Pain Evaluation Toolkit Proactive Pain Solutions About the Guest Katie Birnie, Phd   Dr. Birnie completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Dalhousie University in 2016, including a predoctoral residency in Pediatric Health Psychology at the IWK Health Centre. She completed a CIHR-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto and The Hospital for Sick Children. Dr. Birnie also spent time as a clinical research postdoctoral fellow and clinical psychologist at the University Health Network, including with the Transitional Pain Service at Toronto General Hospital and the Interventional Pain Program at Toronto Western Hospital. Dr. Birnie joined Alberta Children's Hospital as a medical psychologist in 2018, where she continues to provide clinical care through the Vi Riddell Children's Pain and Rehabilitation Program.   Dr. Birnie is a recognized leader in pain research and patient partnership, for which she has received a number of national and international accolades. She was the recipient of the 2020 Pain Awareness Award from the Canadian Pain Society and was selected as a 2020-2021 MAYDAY Fellow, a prestigious fellowship focused on communications and advocacy for improved pain care. Previously highlighted awards include the Dr. John T. Goodman Award for Trainee Research in Pediatric Pain, the Brain Star Award from the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, and a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Ryan Cristián from The Last American Vagabond joins us for episode 110 of Airey Bros Radio. Ryan recently won the Serena Shim Award For Uncompromising Integrity In Journalism and sat down with the Prince and I to discuss his research & journalism and why The Last American Vagabond has had to deal with so much censorship over the last year. Here are the links to the articles Ryan goes through in the episode Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/bioecon-%28%23%20023SUPP%29%20NSF-NBIC.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210412033912/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9460389/Pentagon-scientists-invent-microchip-senses-COVID-19-body-symptoms.html https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/pfizer Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875889/ Fact Sheet https://www.fda.gov/media/144413/download NIH Research Matters https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/experimental-coronavirus-vaccine-highly-effective Stay Connected!!! https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/ The Airey Bros. IG @aireybros / https://www.instagram.com/aireybros/ https://www.blacksheependurance.com/podcast Premium Content : AB/DC Programming / B-Role & Mix Tapes / Accountability Coaching https://www.patreon.com/AireyBros Value for Value https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=BHCAKFGH6TNF2

Ryan Cristián from The Last American Vagabond joins us for episode 110 of Airey Bros Radio. Ryan recently won the Serena Shim Award For Uncompromising Integrity In Journalism and sat down with the Prince and I to discuss his research & journalism and why The Last American Vagabond has had to deal with so much censorship over the last year. Here are the links to the articles Ryan goes through in the episode Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/bioecon-%28%23%20023SUPP%29%20NSF-NBIC.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210412033912/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9460389/Pentagon-scientists-invent-microchip-senses-COVID-19-body-symptoms.html https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/pfizer Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875889/ Fact Sheet https://www.fda.gov/media/144413/download NIH Research Matters https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/experimental-coronavirus-vaccine-highly-effective Stay Connected!!! https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/ The Airey Bros. IG @aireybros / https://www.instagram.com/aireybros/ https://www.blacksheependurance.com/podcast Premium Content : AB/DC Programming / B-Role & Mix Tapes / Accountability Coaching https://www.patreon.com/AireyBros Value for Value https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=BHCAKFGH6TNF2

In this episode we speak with Sandy Smeenk about chronic pain disorders and the ILC Foundation. Sandy is the Co-Founder & Executive Director of The ILC Charitable Foundation (“The ILC”). The “ILC” is the abbreviation for “Improving the Lives of Children” touching children of all ages and throughout adult-life. Sandy has worked with and led teams of people on the development of programs to improve the lives of individuals living with Ehlers Danlos Syndromes (EDS), Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD), related disorders and Chronic Pain. Sandy is a member of the Patient-Engagement Committee with the CIHR funded Chronic Pain Network, is a member of the Chronic Pain Care Forum whose aim is to support the development of a National Pain Strategy and is recognized by Patient Commando as a Canadian Women Changing Healthcare. Learning Points: 1. Who does the The ILC Charitable Foundation serve? 2. Why are people with Ehlers Danlos Syndromes (EDS), Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD), related disorders and Chronic Pain so underserved? 3. What are some foundational programs offered by the ILC? Social Media Handles/Website Address www.TheILCFoundation.org https://twitter.com/ILC_Foundation https://www.facebook.com/TheILCFoundation?fref=ts https://www.instagram.com/theilcfoundation/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/2047512/admin/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsWpRQ2sCHKEC9SsjH196AA/videos

MIB Agents OsteoBites S2 Ep 10: Sumit Gupta, MD, PhD, FRCPC “Long Term Mental Health Outcomes in Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer” ... Guest Information: Sumit Gupta, MD, PhD, FRCPC Hospital for Sick Children, Staff Oncologist and Clinician Investigator University of Toronto, Associate Professor Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Associate Professor Cancer Research Program at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Adjunct Scientist Dr. Gupta completed a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Toronto, during which time he was supported by a CIHR Fellowship Award. He is one of the Assistant Chairs of the Lancet Oncology Commission on Sustainable Pediatric Cancer Care in low and middle income countries. Sumit has worked extensively with pediatric oncologists and policymakers throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and India. He currently holds grant funding from The Garron Family Cancer Centre, CIHR and the Terry Fox Research Institute.Sumit Gupta, MD, PhD, FRCPC ... Panelists Amy Woodcheke, Physicians Assistant and Childhood Cancer Survivor Mia Sandino, MIB Junior Board Member and OsteoWarriors Ann Graham, OsteoWarrior & Executive Director of MIB Agents ... Coming up next week is Dr. Ines Lohse of University of Miami, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center talking with us about “Drug Sensitivity Testing for the Treatment Stratification of Cancer Patients” ... MIB Agents is a leading pediatric #osteosarcoma nonprofit dedicated to Making It Better for our community of patients, caregivers, doctors, and researchers with the goal of less toxic, more effective treatments and a cure for this aggressive bone cancer. More information at www.mibagents.org ... Register: https://bit.ly/MIBobites Osteosarcoma Resources: www.MIBagents.org/contact Link Mentioned on this episode on ASCO BLOG: Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors https://connection.asco.org/blogs/addressing-mental-health-needs-adolescent-and-young-adult-cancer-survivors --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mibagents/support

One year ago, Dr. Preston Smith remembers watching the coronavirus inch closer and closer to the University of Saskatchewan. "It felt like being in the emergency room and hearing the police and ambulances had been called to an accident. You knew something was coming," he said. By mid-March 2020, nearly every aspect of teaching and research was shutting down at the medical college he oversees. "Experiments were interrupted. There was an enormous loss to our research," said Smith. Crediting 'amazing teamwork' for moving coursework online and getting biomedical researchers back into their laboratories, Smith  makes it clear -- science is the only way out of this pandemic. In this episode, he discusses the pandemic, the need for research and dollars to support it, and his recruiting drive to fill 15-20 faculty positions over the coming years, as a cohort of senior researchers in Saskatoon retire. “It is a fabulous time to be trying to recruit doctoral and post-doctoral biomedical scientists," said Smith, who is now in his second term as dean.   And he's unequivocal: provinces that spend tax dollars on biomedical research see fewer preventable illnesses and deaths. “Our researchers are incredibly creative,” Smith said, noting his faculty punch well above their weight in securing grants. “We need more local funding that will equip our researchers to be competitive nationally.”  

Lesley A. Tarasoff, Ph.D., joins us to discuss her research and why it is so meaningful to her, boundary setting in academia, the importance of and wonderful things that come from sharing one’s story, and so much more!Dr. Tarasoff is a CIHR-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Primarily using qualitative methods, her program of research is concerned with understanding and addressing sexual, reproductive, perinatal, and mental health and health care disparities and inequities experienced by populations that have been historically overlooked and often stigmatized, namely women with disabilities and sexual minority women. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Health Sciences from the Dalla Lana School of Public at the University of Toronto. Dr. Tarasoff also holds an M.A. in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto and a B.A. in History and Women’s Studies from Bishop’s University. She grew up in the beautiful Slocan Valley in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia.Follow Lesley on Twitter and check out her website, here. This episode of Accidental Intellectual is produced by Holly Boyne, Manon Feasson, Lauren Goldberg, Bronwyn Lamond, Rachael Lyon, Harrison McNaughtan, Stephanie Morris, Lee Propp, and Ariana Simone. Our theme music is by Alexandra Willet and our branding by Maxwell McNaughtan.To learn more about the Accidental Intellectual podcast and get full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit our website at www.accidentalintellectual.com.

Episode 50 BEaTS Research Radio - Interview with Dr. Michael J. Strong. Dr. Mo Al-Khalaf from the University of Ottawa Heart Institute talks to Dr. Michael J. Strong, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). A conversation about Dr. Strong’s academic path from student to senior scientist, the current and future goals of CIHR, and important advice for early-career scientists.Learn more about the Canadian Institutes of Health Research: https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca

In episode 2 of our special series on the importance of physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, we talked all things exercise, brain, and infection, with Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose from the University of British Columbia, who is a Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience. We discussed the benefits of aerobic and resistance exercise for preserving brain health and how this serves as a model for the hypothesis that exercise can be beneficial in protecting the brain against some of the negative effects of a COVID-19 infection. As the Director of Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience lab and the recipient of CIHR funding, Dr. Liu-Ambrose will investigate the long lasting effects of a COVID-19 infection on the brain, and how lifestyle factors, including exercise, may afford protection against negative effects in her analysis of participants of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA).Follow her work via twitter: @UBC_CogMobLab. If you have any questions or comments on the episode, please post them in our forum! https://www.medicineinmotionpodcast.com/live Episode Hosts: Swapna Mylabathula & Annabel Rutherford

Did you know there is food insecurity in your own neighborhood? What can you do to change that? and what ARE you going to do about it? Join Dr. Tina Moffat as she discusses how to gain confidence in your abilities and seek to make sustainable change in your own community. During this episode - Shania Bhopa and Dr. Moffat analyze the disparities that exist within Hamilton to understand how local issues are global issues, particularly hunger, and poverty. Youth today need to take action and utilize their digital platforms to create change. Dr. Tina Moffat offers her advice to her "younger self" and how we can learn from her experiences. ______________________________________ Shania Bhopa is a current McMaster Global Health graduate student who is passionate about health communications and knowledge translation. She is the founder and executive director of The Canadian Courage Project, a GTA based non-profit organization striving to assist homeless youth with animal companions. She is also an educator, with a micro-credential to teach children and young people about the Sustainable Development Goals. Shania spends her free time learning about mental health and health promotion and is currently writing a wellness book with an aim to help women with their health and well-being. Dr. Tina Moffat's current research focuses on knowledge translation and support for pregnant women regarding the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) as it relates to maternal diet and child health outcomes. This is a community study based in Hamilton called "Mothers to Babies" (M2B). As well, Moffat currently holds an SSHRC Research Engage Grant (2019-2020) to do research and evaluation of youth food programming at the Hamilton Community Food Centre (HCFC), part of a growing movement of Food Centres across Canada that move beyond charity models of food banks to support food insecure populations to access nutritious food in a dignified manner. Dr. Moffat has also done research on food security and dietary change among immigrants and refugees in Canada, based on a CIHR-funded research project called Changing Homes, Changing Food (2012-2015). Other research interests include vitamin D intake in North America, as well as the social and cultural determinants of child obesity.

SERIES 3 | EPISODE 1: Examining the Controversy Around Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) in Preterm Infants GUEST: Souvik Mitra, MD,  MScAssistant Professor & NeonatologistDepartment of Pediatrics, Dalhousie University & IWK Health Centre, HalifaxSocial Media Editor, International Society of Evidence Based NeonatologyThe treatment of patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) in preterm infants is the focus of much debate and controversy. Dr. Souvik Mitra offers insight for patient's families and caregivers as to how recent research has impacted our understanding of PDAs and what the future might hold for treatment options.Dr Souvik Mitra is a neonatologist and researcher based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His primary research interest is improving outcomes of preterm babies with a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), both through systemic review of current evidence and generation of new evidence through clinical research. He is the Principal Investigator of an ongoing CIHR-funded pan-Canadian study comparing the different medications used for treating a PDA, as well as the lead on several Cochrane Neonate systematic reviews on this topic. Dr. Mitra is also the social media editor for the International Society for Evidence-Based Neonatology. You can follow the society on Twitter at @EBNEO and Dr. Mitra himself at @souvik_neo.

What exactly do we mean when we say 'lived experience'? What does it convey that other terms don't? What sort of extra 'work' is the term doing, and for whose benefit?  Lots to consider! We take listeners through two segments in this episode. First, we speak with an organization that is committed to patient engagement and partnership, and also hiring people with lived experience into certain roles.  Then, taking a wider view on engagement generally, we contemplate the ins and outs of the term 'lived experience' and consider its value to healthcare organizations. Our guests are Katherine Dib and Katie Birnie of SKIP - Solutions for Kids in Pain. SKIP is a knowledge mobilization network which helps to translate and disseminate research and information about pediatric pain, to a variety of potential knowledge users including families, physicians, researchers, and policy-makers. Katherine is SKIP's Patient Engagement Coordinator, a role reserved for someone with lived experience of pediatric pain, and Katie is SKIP's Assistant Scientific Director.  *Correction: In this episode we misidentify SKIP's funder as CIHR. SKIP is funded by the Networks of Centres of Excellence. [download transcript] Mentioned in this episode: SKIP - Solutions for Kids in Pain SKIP on Twitter Katie Birnie on Twitter

The toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on daily life can’t be overstated. All of us have had to rapidly adjust the way we live and listen to the medical community to keep people safe. Scientists, researchers and medical professionals around the world are collaborating to find solutions or treatments to combat the virus. In this talk, we bring experts to you so you can ask them anything, without leaving your own home. Dr. Andrew Costa is the chair of clinical epidemiology and research director at the school of medicine at McMaster University, Waterloo Region Campus. Dr. Costa and his team are passionate about using big data to help us solve the medical challenges of the future. We will explore a number of key topics including: Epidemiology and the current COVID-19 implications Leveraging big data and real-time tools in healthcare Using big data to solve problems in our modern world Graham Campbell is a Research Coordinator on Dr. Costa’s team and will be moderating the discussion and fielding questions from our online audience. Graham’s current areas of focus include qualitative health systems research, facilitating interdisciplinary projects with partners, and exploring new technologies in safe, effective, and accessible patient care. About the speaker Dr. Andrew Costa Dr. Costa is the Schlegel Research Chair in Clinical Epidemiology and Aging in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University. Dr. Costa also serves as the Research Director at the DeGroote School of Medicine, Waterloo Regional Campus. Dr. Costa is also the Research Director of The Big Data and Geriatric Models of Care Research Cluster, a collection of scientists and clinicians that use big data to inform and evaluate better models of care for older adults in communities across Canada. Dr. Costa’s research program promotes evidence-based care and health policy in seniors and geriatric care. Dr. Costa is an interRAI Fellow where he is engaged in the Network of Excellence in Acute Care (iNEAC) and leads the Emergency Department Working Group. He has received CIHR awards for his research in health services and policy.His program of research makes use of health information and technology to develop better models of care and decision support systems in home and community care, and emergency departments.

Marianna Brussoni's research focuses on child injury prevention: "Current research interests include the influence of geographic, cultural and social places on parenting related to risk and safety; developmental importance of children’s risky play; the impact of injury on children’s health related quality of life; injuries among Aboriginal populations; and, injury surveillance. I currently lead CIHR-funded research to develop an index of the playability of the built environment; and Lawson Foundation-funded research to develop an online tool, to reframe parents’ risk perceptions with the goal of facilitating children’s access to risky play. The tool is available at OutsidePlay.ca and the randomized controlled trial to test its effectiveness is underway. My work has been featured extensively in national and international media."

Thank you for listening to Mormon Sex Info. This episode is an archived episode and is only now becoming publicly available. Mormon Sex Info relies on contributions. To contribute, please visit: mormonsex.info Natasha Helfer Parker interviews neuroscientist Dr. James G. Pfaus, PhD, in regards to helping women understand sexual desire and arousal disorders as opposed to libido disparities with partners, vaginismus, an asexual orientation, etc. This podcast is so loaded with information that it will be worth listening to at least twice. This podcast covers everything from why the DSM-5 has organized female sexual disorders in the way it has, issues with how research and pharmacological entities approach women’s issues, to evolutionary theory, to the benefits and limitations of the new drug Addyi (flibanserin), to feminine/masculine traits humans share, to brain plasticity, to opiod actions in the brain, to a variety of other topics. So informational! Jim Pfaus received his Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver in 1990. After postdoctoral training in molecular biology and behavior at the Rockefeller University in New York City with Dr. Donald Pfaff, he joined Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology, Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montréal in 1992 where he is currently a professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, and a university research fellow, with cross-appointments to the graduate programs in Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Exercise Science. His research is generally concerned with the neurochemical and molecular events that subserve sexual behavior and neuroendocrine functions. His particular interests are in the role of brain monoamine and neuropeptide systems in sexual arousal, desire, reward, and inhibition in laboratory animals, and the role played by steroid hormones and cell‑signaling mechanisms in the neuronal and behavioral responses to primary and conditioned sexual stimuli, especially those that induce conditioned sexual excitation and inhibition, resulting in epigenetic changes to neurochemical systems that subserve sexual partner preferences. His research in human sexual function is focused on subjective and objective measures of sexual desire and pleasure in women and men using a combination of eye-tracking, EEG, brain imaging, and genital arousal measures. His research is funded by operating grants from CIHR and NSERC (Canada), FRQS (Québec), and NIH (USA). In addition, he has held consulting grants from several pharmaceutical and biotech companies to work on the sexual side-effects of different psychiatric medications and on the identification of new drugs to treat male and female sexual dysfunctions. He has published over 160 research papers, reviews, and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals and books, and presented his research at numerous scientific conferences and consultations worldwide. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Sexual Medicine Reviews, Psychophysiology and Preclinical Models Section Editor for Current Reviews in Sexual Medicine, and sits on the editorial boards of the Behavioral Neuroscience and Physiology & Behavior. He is the President-Elect of the International Academy of Sex Research. Resources mentioned during podcast: International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health

Thank you for listening to Mormon Sex Info. This episode is an archived episode and is only now becoming publicly available. Mormon Sex Info relies on contributions. To contribute, please visit: mormonsex.info Natasha Helfer Parker interviews neuroscientist Dr. James G. Pfaus, PhD, in regards to helping women understand sexual desire and arousal disorders as opposed to libido disparities with partners, vaginismus, an asexual orientation, etc. This podcast is so loaded with information that it will be worth listening to at least twice. This podcast covers everything from why the DSM-5 has organized female sexual disorders in the way it has, issues with how research and pharmacological entities approach women’s issues, to evolutionary theory, to the benefits and limitations of the new drug Addyi (flibanserin), to feminine/masculine traits humans share, to brain plasticity, to opiod actions in the brain, to a variety of other topics. So informational! Jim Pfaus received his Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver in 1990. After postdoctoral training in molecular biology and behavior at the Rockefeller University in New York City with Dr. Donald Pfaff, he joined Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology, Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montréal in 1992 where he is currently a professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, and a university research fellow, with cross-appointments to the graduate programs in Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Exercise Science. His research is generally concerned with the neurochemical and molecular events that subserve sexual behavior and neuroendocrine functions. His particular interests are in the role of brain monoamine and neuropeptide systems in sexual arousal, desire, reward, and inhibition in laboratory animals, and the role played by steroid hormones and cell‑signaling mechanisms in the neuronal and behavioral responses to primary and conditioned sexual stimuli, especially those that induce conditioned sexual excitation and inhibition, resulting in epigenetic changes to neurochemical systems that subserve sexual partner preferences. His research in human sexual function is focused on subjective and objective measures of sexual desire and pleasure in women and men using a combination of eye-tracking, EEG, brain imaging, and genital arousal measures. His research is funded by operating grants from CIHR and NSERC (Canada), FRQS (Québec), and NIH (USA). In addition, he has held consulting grants from several pharmaceutical and biotech companies to work on the sexual side-effects of different psychiatric medications and on the identification of new drugs to treat male and female sexual dysfunctions. He has published over 160 research papers, reviews, and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals and books, and presented his research at numerous scientific conferences and consultations worldwide. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Sexual Medicine Reviews, Psychophysiology and Preclinical Models Section Editor for Current Reviews in Sexual Medicine, and sits on the editorial boards of the Behavioral Neuroscience and Physiology & Behavior. He is the President-Elect of the International Academy of Sex Research. Resources mentioned during podcast: Masters & Johnson Diagnostic Statistic Manual (DSM-5) Asexuality: An Extreme Variant of Sexual Desire Disorder? Research by Lori Brotto ICD-10 International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health  

What do you do for your patients around their dying experience? Do you celebrate their lives and support those left behind in grief? Could you bring more humanity to your ICU?   Whilst you and your ICU colleagues likely act with kindness much of the time, I suspect listening to this podcast will have you wondering whether you could do better, especially when your patients are receiving end of life care. This episode’s guest, Professor Deborah Cook, from Hamilton in Canada, is striving to do this through the 3 Wishes Project she and her colleagues initiated several years ago. They encourage specific wishes unique to their dying patients, thereby dignifying the person, giving greater voice to the family and evoking clinician compassion. In this podcast you will hear all about this profound and important work, the sort of acts of kindness that have occurred in her ICU, the way you could approach this in your ICU, the benefits to clinical staff and institutional leaders, some of the logistical challenges they’ve faced, and some thoughts on spiritual care in the ICU. Deborah Cook is a Distinguished Professor at McMaster University in the Departments of Medicine, Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. As a life long clinician-scientist, she holds the first Canada Research Chair in Intensive Care Medicine and is the Academic Chair in Critical Care Medicine at McMaster. She is a founding member and 2-term Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group. Deborah is an active practitioner in critical care medicine at St. Joseph’s Hospital where she supervises junior and senior clinical trainees. She is devoted to mentoring Masters and PhD graduate students in McMaster's Health Research Methodology Program, and junior faculty around the world, resulting in the creation of the Deborah J Cook Mentorship Award by the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group. Deborah has published over 700 peer-review articles with an associated H index of 168. Her multi-method multi-disciplinary research interests include life support technology, prevention of ICU-acquired complications, end-of-life care, and research ethics. She has received numerous national and international awards for her practice, teaching, mentoring and research. She is a pre-eminent critical care scholar. Dr. Cook was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2009), a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2010), and received the inaugural Distinguished Lecturer Award in Critical Care Sciences from CIHR's Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (2017). Her work on microbiome modification in critical illness using probiotics resulted in a prestigious Killam Fellowship in Health Sciences from the Canadian Council of the Arts (2017). Deborah received the Gold Leaf Award from CIHR for her enduring contributions to health care (2019). For life long scientific contributions to the improvement of global intensive care and her foundational leadership in the first national ICU research network in the world, Dr. Cook was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada (2016). In this conversation Deborah also talks about: How she was drawn to intensive care from internal medicine How she discovered several gold mines to conduct research on Her belief that following your passion is the key to research success How humanity has fallen by the wayside as intensive care has developed How she was dissuaded from doing end of life research early in her career The growing interest in ethics and end of life care How she approaches ward rounds Dealing with our fixation on computer screens Being present and avoiding note-writing on ward rounds Her high expectations as a clinical mentor (including of herself) The importance of presence and engagement as the attending consultant The irrelevance of many of the words spoken on ward rounds The importance of keeping things fresh by releasing dying passions Her thoughts about how she cares for herself Which exercise and which books she prefers Her mindfulness practice Her love for family Some invaluable career tips Deborah is passionate about patients receiving the very best care, about clinicians delivering this in an organised and cohesive fashion, and about researchers providing the highest quality evidence to guide this. She has been a kind friend and advisor to me over many years and I can’t think of anyone with a better mix of acumen, experience and personality as the ideal Mastering Intensive Care podcast guest. She is a personal favourite so please enjoy listening to the wonderful Deborah Cook.   Andrew Davies   -------------------- About the Mastering Intensive Care podcast: The podcast is aimed to inspire and empower you to bring your best self to the intensive care unit, through conversations with thought-provoking guests. I hope you’ll glean insights to help you improve as a healthcare professional and as a human being so you can make a truly valuable contribution to your patient’s lives.   -------------------- Links to people, organisations and other resources mentioned: Deborah Cook (McMaster University) Article about Deborah Cook Article 2 about Deborah Cook Video of Deborah Cook Canadian Critical Care Trials Group PROTECT study comparing dalteparin and heparin The 3 Wishes Project Publication from 3 Wishes Project Other publications from 3 Wishes Project ANZICS Clinical Trials Group David Sackett Book "Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" (by Greg McKeown) Mastering Intensive Care podcast - Episode 45 with Scott Weingart EMCrit podcast 2019 World Congress of Intensive Care Medicine New Normal Project podcast Plantfit Summit Mastering Intensive Care podcast Mastering Intensive Care page on Facebook Mastering Intensive Care at Life In The Fast Lane Andrew Davies on Twitter: @andrewdavies66 Andrew Davies on Instagram: @andrewdavies66 Email Andrew Davies

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation On The Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the Journal and its editors. We're your cohosts. I'm Dr Carolyn Lam, associate editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley:             And I'm Greg Hundley, associate editor from the Poly Heart Center at VCU health in Richmond, Virginia. Carolyn, oh, this is going to be an exciting featured article today, and we're going to discuss the combination of agents or their administration et al that are best suited for managing both anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy and those with coronary disease, peripheral arterial disease and heart failure. And, we'll speak with Dr Kelley Branch from the University of Washington. Dr Carolyn Lam:                And me! Dr Greg Hundley:             Yes. How am I going to interview you? And, we'll discuss the utility of Rivaroxaban with or without aspirin in patients with heart failure or peripheral arterial disease from the compass trial. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Well, I'm not going to let you get there until I tell you about this first basic paper I've chosen because it focuses on the unfolded protein response. Dr Greg Hundley:             What's that? Dr Carolyn Lam:                Well, Greg, I was really hoping you'd ask. The unfolded protein response is a cellular adaptive process to cope with protein folding stress. Now, approximately 40% of human proteins are predicted to be either transmembrane or secretory. The synthesis, the folding, the cellular transportation and location of these proteins rely on proper functioning of this secretory pathway. Numerous studies have established that the unfolded protein response plays versatile roles during development and under physiologic and pathophysiologic conditions. However, the role of this unfolded protein response in the regulation of cardiomyocyte growth is unclear. Dr Greg Hundley:             That's fantastic, Carolyn. I've already learned something here. So, what did this paper show? Dr Carolyn Lam:                This is from Dr Wang and colleagues from UT Southwestern, and basically, they use both gain and loss of function approaches to genetically manipulate spliced X-box binding protein one or XBP1, which is the most conserved signaling branch of the unfolded protein response in the heart. In addition, primary cardiomyocyte cultures were employed to address the role of XBP1S in cell growth in a cell autonomous manner. They found that XBP1S expression was reduced in both human and Rhode and cardiac tissues with heart failure deficiency of XBP1S lead to decompensation and exacerbation of heart failure progression under pressure overload. On the other hand, cardiac restricted over expression of XBP1S prevented the development of cardiac dysfunction. Mechanistically, they found that XBP1S stimulated adaptive cardiac growth, your activation of mechanistic target of rapamycin or MTOR signaling which is mediated via the FK-506 binding protein 11, which is a novel transcriptional target of XBP1S. So in conclusion, this study really showed a critical role of the XBP1S FKB or FK-506 binding protein 11 and MTOR axis in coupling the unfolded protein response and cardiac cell growth regulation. Dr Greg Hundley:             Boy Carolyn, you explained that so well, and I learned a lot from that. I hope I can do as well with this next article from Professor Johann Backs from the University of Heidelberg. Now paradoxically, some glucose lowering drugs have been shown to worsen heart failure, raising the question of how glucose mediates protective versus detrimental cardiac signaling, and this study from his group focused on one of the class two histone deacetylases or HDAC's namely HDAC-4, which functions as an important epigenetic regulator by responding to upstream stress signals, and linking them to downstream gene regulatory programs involved in among other things, metabolic regulation. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Very interesting. So what did they find? Dr Greg Hundley:             What they found is that HDAC4 acts as an important maintenance factor of cardiac function in diabetes and O-glycine-N0acetylglucosamine of HDAC4 at searing 642 induces the production of cardio-protective HDAC F-end terminal fragment and attenuates cardio detrimental Cam kinase two mediated phosphorylation of HDAC4 at searing 632. Vice versa, Cam kinase two mediated phosphorylation of HDAC4 at searing 632 attenuates HDAC-4 n terminal production. Thus, these findings lay the ground for the development of novel therapeutic strategies for diabetic patients with heart failure by inhibiting Cam kinase phosphorylation at CIHR 632 or enhancing o-glycine and escalation at searing 642. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Fascinating, Greg. Well, my next paper is a subgroup analysis of EUCLID and is the first to assess acute limb ischemia in the context of a large-scale clinical trial studying a primary peripheral artery disease population. Dr Greg Hundley:             So Carolyn, reminded us what was the EUCLID trial. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Okay, so EUCLID stands for Examining Use of Ticagrelor in Peripheral Artery Disease, and this was a randomized clinical trial that included acute limb ischemia as an adjudicated outcome in a primary peripheral artery disease population randomized to ticagrelor versus clopidogrel. Now in EUCLID ticagrelor was not superior to Clopidogrel for the prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with stable peripheral artery disease. However, a EUCLID subgroup analysis of patients with and without prior limb revascularization demonstrated significantly higher risk for acute limb ischemia hospitalization in patients with prior low extremity revascularization. Dr Greg Hundley:             So Carolyn, that's interesting. So, what did they find related in this study that focused on the acute limb ischemia? Dr Carolyn Lam:                Right. So, today's paper is from Dr Hess and colleagues at University of Colorado School of Medicine and CPC, clinical research in Aurora, Colorado. And, they found that acute limb ischemia occurred in 1.7% of almost 13,900 randomized patients with a median time to hospitalization for acute limb Ischemia of 320 days after randomization. In this population, prior lower extremity revascularization, atrial fibrillation and lower ankle brachial index identified patients at higher risk for acute limb ischemia. Hospitalization for acute limb ischemia was associated with subsequent cardiovascular and limb ischemic events. So, the take home message is providers should monitor for signs and symptoms of acute limb ischemia in patients with stable symptomatic peripheral artery disease, particularly those with prior lower extremity revascularization, atrial fibrillation, and lower ankle brachial index. Dr Greg Hundley:             That's very instructive, Carolyn. Fantastic message. So, I'm going to ask you if you could select one lipid biomarker to forecast future adverse cardiovascular events, which would you select? Total cholesterol, HTLC, non-HTLC, direct and calculated LDLC, APO-A1, or APO-B? Dr Carolyn Lam:                Well, I'm traditional. I would have chosen LDL. Dr Greg Hundley:             Okay. Well, the authors of this study led by Dr Paul Welsh at the University of Glasgow attempted to answer this question by studying participants from the UK Biobank without baseline cardiovascular disease and not taking statins with relevant lipid measurements. They had 346,686 participants. An incident fatal or nonfatal cardiovascular event occurred in 6,200 participants of which 1,656 were fatal, and they occurred over a median time of 8.9 years. So, the associations of non-fasting lipid measurements, total cholesterol, HDLC, non HDLC, direct and calculated LDLC, APO-a1, and APO-B with cardiovascular disease were compared using Cox models, adjusting for classical risk factors and predictive utility was determined by the C-index and net reclassification index. Also, prediction was tested in 68,649 participants taking a statin with or without baseline cardiovascular disease, and that group experienced 3,515 cardiovascular events. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Okay, so drum roll. What did they find? Dr Greg Hundley:             So, measurement of total cholesterol and HDLC in the non-fasted state is sufficient or was sufficient to capture the lipid associated risk in the cardiovascular disease prediction with no meaningful improvement from addition of APO lipoproteins, direct or calculated LDLC. And, similar findings were reproduced in those taking a statin at baseline.                                                 As such, the authors feel like calls for widespread use of APO lipoproteins are not warranted given the negligible difference in risk prediction beyond total cholesterol in HDLC. And, direct LDLC is also not required for risk prediction. Non HDLC is a cheaper or equivalent predictor of risk on and off statins without the requirement of one of us being fasting. This is an excellent article for our listeners to review or download. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Wow, that is so cool. So, from one excellent paper to another excellent paper in our feature discussion. Let's go, shall we? Dr Greg Hundley:             Welcome everyone to discussion of our featured article. We have Dr Kelley Branch from the University of Washington and our own Carolyn Lam, and they're going to be discussing the compass trial. So Kelley, could you tell us a little bit about the rationale for compass as opposed to the previously published commander study? Dr Kelley Branch:              So, in order to understand compass and compare it to commanders, we're going to have to go back a little bit in time here. And recall, you know well over 20 years ago that when we used anticoagulants in coronary artery disease, that was actually shown to be more beneficial than aspirin alone, but because of the excess bleeding risk, warfarin or vitamin K antagonists not used, and aspirin won. Fast forward a number of years, and now we have the non-vitamin K anticoagulants, and the was potentially that we could find the goldilocks, if you will, the good balance of benefit as well as less bleeding maybe used to these new agents. So, the compass trial was really born from an atlas ACS one and Atlas ACS two, which found that a low dose of, in this case, Rivaroxaban 2.5 milligrams VAB as well as five milligrams VAB were shown to be beneficial in patients after acute coronary syndrome.                                                 And then, it was thought what happens if we treat these patients with now chronic coronary disease as well as arterial disease? And from this 27,000 patients, 47,395 patients were tested, and our study very specifically looked at patients with a baseline or a history of heart failure when they answered compass. Compass were shown to be beneficial with specifically the use of aspirin plus Rivaroxaban, 2.5 milligrams BAD. And, our idea was to test this in patients with this baseline or history of heart failure. Now, this is in real contradistinction to what the commander tried to do. And the reason why encompass, we actually excluded patients with severe heart failure. This was defined as a New York Heart Association class three or four or an ejection fraction less than 30%. Now if you looked at patients with commander, these patients had ejection fraction less than 40%. That was a criteria to get in. And of course, these patients had to have a recent hospitalization for heart failure. So, these are very different patient populations. Well, both of them, yes, they did have coronary artery disease, but really very different patient populations. Dr Greg Hundley:             Very good. So Kelley, tell us specifically, what were your treatment group assignments and the doses and the outcomes that you were going to follow, and then lead us into what did you find? What were the outcomes of your study? Dr Kelley Branch:              Sure, so compass was actually developed as a partial three by two factorial. The arm that we're going to be talking about is the rivaroxaban arm. There was also another arm that tested the use of Proton pump inhibitors, and that actually was shown to not be as beneficial as we thought to decreased bleeding. But specifically for rivaroxaban, the baseline was aspirin, and this was on top of guideline based medical therapy. And then patients were randomized to either aspirin alone plus placebo or Rivaroxaban, five milligrams BAD, plus placebo. So, no aspirin at all or aspirin, a hundred milligrams daily, plus Rivaroxaban, 2.5 milligrams BAD. Those were really the three treatments. Patients were going to be followed for about three to four years. That's what we expected to get our 2200 events , an event-driven trial. But, because of the overwhelming benefits at 23 months median follow up, this trial was actually stopped early, so we only had a little over 1300 events at that time.                                                 And with that we saw substantial reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events, about 24% mortality was reduced 18%, and there was a bleeding risk along with this, major bleeding, little different way of actually measuring major bleeding, but that was increased by about 70%, and that was the overall trial results. So, looking at the patients with heart failure, though, there was actually a relatively large proportion of patients, so 5,902 patients, about 22% of patients, actually had either baseline heart failure or had a history of heart failure coming in. Now, this was defined specifically by the PI's. These were not rigorously defined as compared to say commander, but these were patients where the PI said this patient has history or has chronic heart failure. So, with these 5,902 patients, we looked specifically at the outcomes of major adverse cardiovascular events similar to what we saw with compass and that is cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or any stroke, that combination. And then, looked at some others exploratory analysis like mortality.                                                 And, what we found is that in patients with heart failure, the baseline rate was substantially higher for a mate's. Not too surprising because this tends to be a higher risk patient population. But, what we found is that the hazard ratio was about 0.68, so pretty similar to what we've seen the 24% relative risk. In this case, this was a 32% relative risk reduction in those patients with heart failure. Now, if we looked at a patients without heart failure, the hazard ratio is 0.79, so fairly similar and the [conference intervals 00:16:33] overlap. No statistical heterogeneity or no difference between those, but what we did see if we looked at the absolute risk reduction, was an absolute risk reduction in heart failure of 2.4% reduction. That means a number needed to treat of about 42. If you look at the absolute risk reduction for those patients without heart failure, that was 0.9 to 1.0 depending on what the rounding was. We took 1.0 so that means the number needed to treat of 103. So, these were slightly different relative risks, but overall, what we saw is that the hazard ratio is very consistent with the overall effect of compass in the same direction.                                                 Interestingly, and actually I think even for me it was surprisingly, we actually looked at the hazard ratios for bleeding, and when we looked at the hazard ratios for bleeding, we fully expected that because it's the higher risk patient population, we actually expected that to go up. What we saw is that the bleeding actually was no difference at all, and if anything in the heart failure population was slightly lower. And, this was fairly surprising to us because we thought that the patients with heart failure, the bleeding would actually trend up because this was a higher risk patient population. So it looks like it's something can be used and really no substantial increase in bleeding. Dr Greg Hundley:             Very good. Well Carolyn, as someone that's managing patients with heart failure, what do you see are the clinical implications of this study? Dr Carolyn Lam:                That is a beautifully simple, direct question but is not as easy to answer as I may have thought. And, that's because the commander trial that Kelley did describe a bit earlier was neutral on its primary outcome. And, the commander trial is what we would traditionally think of as a heart failure trial. And why? Because those were patients that we rigorously define heart failure, including a naturally acid peptide inclusion criteria. And, because we really wanted these to be severe heart failure patients, we recruited them very close to their hospitalization or decompensation event. So, I just want to reiterate what Kelley has already so beautifully described that commander was neutral, whereas this heart failure subset of compass showed very impressive results that were consistent with the very impressive positive results of the overall compass trial.                                                 So, how do we reconcile all of it? Well, first of all, I have to humbly remind myself that this heart failure subset of compass, the entire subset was actually bigger in numbers than the entire of the commander trials. So, this is not a small little subgroup analysis. This is a huge subgroup analysis. And that's why a paper like this, we're so proud to be publishing in circulation.                                                 So, how do I apply it? Well, when I have a compass like patient, which means it's a stable coronary artery disease or peripheral artery disease patient who happens to have some mild heart failure. I think of this patient as a compass patient and I think that the combination of aspirin and low dose Rivaroxaban has been shown to be effective in these patients. So, in such a patient, I continue the aspirin rivaroxaban combination. However, if I have a new patient coming in with decompensated heart failure, a very low ejection fraction and has some coronary artery disease, by the way, I see that as a commander patient, and I just want to make sure that in such a patient I'm not trying to reduce their overall mortality by treating them with a combination of aspirin Rivaroxaban because commander has shown that I don't impact their overall survival with this combination, even though we may still have beneficial effects on their thromboembolic thrombotic events.                                                 Kelley, would you agree? Dr Kelley Branch:              I would completely agree. That was actually born out very, very well by Barry Greenberg who had a really a wonderful sub analysis which he looked at the thrombotic events published in Jama cardiology and really showing that yes, you can affect the thrombotic events, but I mean really what it comes down to is we want to save lives. We want people to be better. There's just an overwhelming risk for these patients with heart failure that is really non thrombotic, primarily. And so, you're really not going to move the needle very much. You may prevent a stroke here, you may prevent some cardiovascular death from a thrombotic problem, but overwhelmingly pump failure, arrhythmia, et cetera. Those are really going to be the drivers for the commander like population. Dr Carolyn Lam:                But Kelley, this comes up a lot when we've chatted, but if you have a compass patient who has heart failure and then gets admitted with heart failure, what would you do then? Dr Kelley Branch:              That's a really interesting question, right? It depends on what the overall goal is. So, if the patient gets admitted for heart failure, now has it decreased ejection fraction sick. So has an MI, now decreased the ejection fraction. What's the end game? Right? Well you know, you may not be affecting mortality in this case because there's now competing events. However, if the goal was to decrease stroke, we've seen that. Still this goal is to decrease MI to some extent than we see that also. So, it would be reasonable to continue in order to prevent those events. But, just knowing full well that there's many other medications which actually do much better for the patients with decreased ejection fraction. And, those would probably be considered first line, but it's reasonable to continue. But, I would never start it. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Kelley, I couldn't agree more. And here I think the, your data showing that the bleeding risk is not significantly increased in this patient matters a lot. So, if I had a patient, a compass patient who was already on the combination and then gets admitted with heart failure, I too, if there's no additional bleeding risk, I would continue the combination as well. Dr Kelley Branch:              Couldn't agree more. Dr Greg Hundley:             Well listeners, this was a fantastic discussion, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great week. Dr Carolyn Lam:                This program is copyright American Heart Association 2019.  

I came across this week’s guest on Twitter and was so grateful for it, because her perspective and research on food systems is a complete inspiration. I’m interviewing Dr. Sarah Rotz, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Geography at Queens University, as part of the CIHR funded “A SHARED Future” project. Sarah has a PhD in geography from the University of Guelph and has published on topics ranging from the political economy of farmland tenure and critical perspectives of big data in agriculture, to the ways that settler-colonial logics and gendered narratives uphold extractive practices and relationships on the land. As a settler-scholar-activist, Sarah’s work focuses on political ecologies of land and food systems, settler colonial patriarchy, and concepts of sovereignty and justice related to food, water, energy and the ecosystems that support them. Her current research critically explores how settler and Indigenous relationships are emerging through land-based, Indigenous food and energy sovereignty projects across Canada. We’re focusing this conversation around the idea of a global diet or globalized food systems. Given Sarah’s unique perspective and research on food systems as they relate to ideas of power, colonialism, and Indigenous sovereignty, I was really excited to speak with her on the strengths and limits to globalized food systems approaches. I definitely have a tendency to become somewhat negative or in my head when it comes to thinking about solutions and changes to our relationships with food and land, and Sarah shares some incredible perspectives and ways to navigate how we feel and emotionally connect with food systems. Check out the episode in the player above, or download on any major podcast platform! Resources: Twitter: @sarahrotz Website: https://sarahrotz.com/ Sarah’s latest piece in The Conversation Canada: Forget smart cities (for a minute), we need to talk about smart farms

Two conversations about partnering with patients to improve health research. This podcast offers practical tips and lessons learned along the way. First, researcher Joanna Henderson and youth-partner Jacqueline Relihan chat about their project that seeks to improve youth access to mental health and addiction services. Jacqueline shares how youth like her helped shape the research study from the very start. Second, clinician-research Dr. Nav Persaud and patient-partner Diane Charter discuss their project, CleanMeds, which has the goal of improving access to essential medicines for underserved populations. This podcast adds to a comprehensive supplement on patient-oriented research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The supplement (open-access) is available here: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/190/supplement The supplement is by the Ontario SPOR Support Unit (OSSU), which is funded by CIHR.

Today's episode might be a trigger for some. October is Infertility and Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month and we thought it was important to talk about this topic that is very real for so many. There are so many people that struggle with this on so many levels. Today we have three very special guests. Not only are they all upcoming contributors in the YGTMAMA series, but they all study and practice different kinds of medicine specializing in fertility. It's incredible how little resources and education are available and how unspoken these issues actually are. The incredible struggles, the massive percentages, the undiagnosed reasons. Today we are going to get super raw and real about infertility and pregnancy loss and hopefully help and empower a lot of mamas. Justine is a CIHR funded post-doctoral fellow working in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. Her research is in the area of health behaviour change and she is specifically using evidence-based strategies, such as self-compassion, to help people feel great – whether it is dealing with the multiple demands that come with being a mother or coping with chronic illnesses. As a new mother herself, she is well versed in the ups and downs of motherhood, and the importance of self-care so that you can be the best YOU possible. Justine explains in this episode that she battled with what Canadian doctors diagnosis of “unexplained infertility”, she and her husband struggled for over two years to get pregnant with no real justification as to why they could not. It was only when they went to see an autoimmune infertility doctor in Las Vegas, that they got some answers. He explained to them: “There's no such thing as unexplained infertility, it's just undiagnosed and it's just finding the right healthcare professional who can figure out what's going on.” Justine wishes that she didn't feel so alone while she was going through her infertility struggles. She advises women if you don't feel supported with the healthcare professionals who you're working with, don't give up, keep searching. She assures us that there are people out there who can help you, so pull them together, there are people who are out there who will believe in you. Hillary is a naturopathic doctor focused specifically on the areas of fertility, prenatal, postpartum and children. Puzzling cases put fire in her belly and she is passionate about helping women. She has aspirations of becoming Prime Minister however, she takes it as a major accomplishment when her kiddos give her an award for the best tummy tickler. Hillary thrives in chaos, is obsessed with chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and loves to belly laugh! Hillary explains that in the naturopathic field they are always trying to look for the root cause as to what issue is going on and treat it from a holistic standpoint. Instead of using pharmaceuticals they treat with homeopathy, high dose nutritional supplements and herbal medications. She describes the field's main purpose as: “Helping the body shift back to its own normal healthy template again versus band-aiding the situations.” She feels very strongly about working side by side with Western medicine doctors to help support their work with naturopathic medicine. Leisha loves skiing in the mountains, floating in the ocean and Bananagrams. She values connection, especially family game night with her kids. She has a daughter who is 10 and a toddler whom she has decided inspired the movie boss baby. She is a Chinese medicine doctor and acupuncturist. Her practice focuses on fertility, prenatal, postpartum and being well. She is inspired by the resilient women she has the privilege of walking beside. Leisha delves into what Chinese medicine is and explains that it works along the same principle as naturopathic medicine in that they look to the root cause of the issue.

  Even though we have been having a terrific summer, innovation doesn’t just stop when the sun is beckoning, and the cottage is calling our name. It persists through rain and shine, and never has that been truer. Keep listening to find out what’s new this week!  +++++  Vasomune Therapeutics, a Toronto-based spin-out from Sunnybrook Research Institute and MaRS Innovation, and AnGes, Inc., a Japan-based biotechnology company focused on developing biotherapeutics, sign an innovative multi-million-dollar global Co-Development Agreement for the development and commercialization of therapeutics treating diseases associated with blood vessel dysfunction and destabilization.  The collaboration will advance Vasomune’s peptide-based Tie2 receptor agonist program, initially for the treatment of critical care indications, including Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), into clinical development with the expectation of initiating clinical trials in 2020. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome is a critical care indication with a significant unmet medical need as there are currently no approved therapeutics.   With such a foundational mechanism involved in multiple disease states, the parties have the option to co-develop the compounds for additional indications associated with vascular dysfunction and leakage. These indications include asthma, atopic dermatitis, glaucoma and vascular complications of diabetes.  Parimal Nathwani, president and CEO of Vasomune Therapeutics says, “Vasomune is enthusiastic to combine our technology, scientific and preclinical expertise with the significant development capabilities and track record of our colleagues at AnGes through this unique partnership structure to maximize the opportunity for a Tie2 receptor agonist to benefit patients. AnGes’ commitment to developing truly novel biotherapeutic medicines directly aligns with Vasomune’s objectives.”  Under the terms of the agreement, AnGes will provide Vasomune with multi-million-dollar co-development contributions including upfront and clinical milestone fees. The initial objective of the partnership is to achieve human proof of concept in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which alone is could potentially be a US$2.5 billion market opportunity worldwide.  Ei Yamada, president and CEO, AnGes, states, “We are truly impressed by the quality of the research derived from Sunnybrook Research Institute and the unique partnership with MaRS Innovation that has created and advanced Vasomune Therapeutics. This program represents a significant commitment by AnGes to advance and develop truly innovative biotherapeutics towards commercialization for the benefit of patients.”  The partnership provides the option for continued co-development through to commercialization and expansion to other indications. The parties will share equally in all expenses and all proceeds including milestone and royalty payments from any third-party licensing transaction. Development and commercialization of the program will be managed through joint committees organized by the two companies.  Rafi Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation  says, “We are honoured to have AnGes validate the strength and translatability of Vasomune’s science led by Dr. Paul Van Slyke, chief scientific officer and co-inventor. This unique partnership has attracted foreign capital and expertise to allow Vasomune, a Canadian born company to grow and scale in Canada and maintain the legacy of the late Dr. Daniel Dumont.”  +++++  Even as brief as two weeks of inactivity as an aging adult might put you at risk of developing type 2 diabetes according to a study conducted at McMaster University.  Not only did an abrupt, brief period of inactivity hasten the onset of the disease and elevate blood sugar levels among pre-diabetic patients, but researchers reported that some study participants did not fully recover when they returned to normal activity for two weeks.  The findings are published online in The Journals of Gerontology.  Lead author of the study, Chris McGlory, a diabetes Canada research fellow in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University says, “We expected to find that the study participants would become diabetic, but we were surprised to see that they didn’t revert back to their healthier state when they returned to normal activity.”  Participants were asked to reduce their daily steps to no more than 1000 steps per day, the equivalent of being housebound due to factors such as illness. Their steps and activity were measured using pedometers and specialized activity monitors, while researchers tested their blood sugar levels and took blood samples during the two-week period.  The results imply that seniors who experience periods of physical inactivity from illness, hospitalization and bed rest are more likely to suffer detrimental consequences to their overall health.  Stuart Phillips, the professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster who oversaw the research explains, “Treatment of type 2 diabetes is expensive and often complicated. If people are going to be off their feet for an extended period they need to work actively to recover their ability to handle blood sugar.”  According to the most recent statistics from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 30 million Americans have diabetes and more than 84 million are prediabetic.  In Canada, Type 2 diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, with nearly 60,000 new cases reported each year, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.  It is the sixth leading cause of death and the leading cause of adult blindness and adult amputation.  In order for pre-diabetic older adults to recover metabolic health and prevent further declines from periods of inactivity, strategies such as active rehabilitation, dietary changes and perhaps medication might be useful.  This research has shown that within days of the onset of inactivity, there are substantial reductions in skeletal muscle mass, strength and a rapid onset of insulin resistance, which is a common feature of type 2 diabetes.  +++++  The Canadian Institutes for Health Research awards the University of Saskatchewan over $2.4 million for indigenous health care, stroke recovery, and cancer research.  Karen Chad, the vice-president of research says, “This major health funding will accelerate research into cancer, stroke, and infectious diseases such as HIV, improving the lives of patients and their families. This funding success also underscores our commitment to community-based research and to incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing.”  Dr. Alexandra King, Cameco chair in Indigenous health, is leading the two projects with an Indigenous focus: studying the potential benefits of peer support for Indigenous women who have HIV or hepatitis C and examining how to improve health and wellness in older Indigenous women living with HIV.  Saskatchewan has the highest rate of HIV in Canada––2.3 times higher than the national diagnosis rate, according to the provincial government. HIV and hepatitis disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples and particularly, Indigenous women.  King will observe the role of a “peer navigator” to determine if the support they extend to indigenous women living with HIV and hepatitis helps them better connect and receive backing from the health care system. Peer navigators are individuals who have gained the wisdom of specific conditions through lived experience, and who receive further training and education on health and related issues.  King says, “Within most Indigenous communities, we put great value on wisdom gained through lived experience. Peer navigators relate to patients in ways that physicians and nurses or other health professionals can not. It just makes sense to have peers involved in health care.”  King’s other study will involve engaging older Indigenous women who are living with HIV to collaboratively create and implement a wellness pilot project based on their self-defined programming needs in five communities in Saskatchewan and British Columbia.  King goes on to say that “Indigenous health research long ago embraced many of the same principles that patient-oriented research now does, in that people with lived experience of a health condition are involved throughout. We’re incorporating culture and ceremony as part of the research process, so the research itself is healing for participants and for the researchers.”  Microbiology and immunology researcher Linda Chelico will lead an $822,000 project to examine the activity of a specific family of enzymes that protect the body against viruses. But if there are too many enzymes, it could lead to a mutation in healthy DNA cells potentially leading to cancer.  Chelico will determine in breast cancer cells whether the enzymes can be used to predict cancer outcomes, be targeted to block cancer starting or progressing, or be used to suppress cancer evolving.  Pharmacy and nutrition researcher Phyllis Paterson is using a rat model to examine how better, more protein-rich nutrition after a stroke can bolster recovery of the brain and leg muscles, in part of a combination of therapies.  Protein-deficient nutrition affects 20 to 35 per cent of patients one-week post-stroke, and up to half of all patients during rehabilitation are protein-deficient due to challenges such as physical and mental disability, and difficulty swallowing.  Overall, the CIHR grants will pay for 14 staff positions and funding of six graduate students and one post-doctoral fellow.  +++++  Antibe Therapeutics Incorporated., a company developing safer therapeutics for pain and inflammation, updates its clinical development activities for its lead drug, ATB-346.  ATB-346 is a hydrogen sulfide-releasing derivative of naproxen. Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs are the most commonly used therapy for osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and general pain reduction, but their use is associated with a high rate of gastrointestinal ulceration and bleeding. Patients with these conditions would benefit greatly from an effective, non-addictive, Gastrointestinal-sparing anti-inflammatory/analgesic agent such as ATB-346.  The Phase 2 dose-ranging, efficacy study remains on track to commence this quarter. Furthermore, Antibe has been pursuing additional development activities that are required for regulatory approval and of strategic value to future partners. The company recently completed a series of animal metabolism studies that have provided key insights on the pharmacokinetic profile of ATB-346. These insights can now be leveraged to better determine the doses and dosing regimens to be used in the upcoming Phase 2 study.  Dan Legault, Antibe’s CEO, says, “Based on the recently reported COX inhibition data and metabolism insights, we have augmented our Phase 2 dose-ranging, efficacy study for ATB-346 to include two protocols. The first protocol will expand upon the metabolism findings which should enable us to better select the optimal doses for the subsequent protocol. Although this modestly extends the timelines of the overall study, it provides a faster path to obtaining the comprehensive package of efficacy and metabolism data that is required for regulatory bodies such as the FDA and valued by global partners.”  The upcoming Phase 2 study will now include a metabolism protocol that will directly inform the dosing cohorts to be used in the subsequent dose-ranging, efficacy protocol. Therefore, the updated development plan will include two parts:  Part 1: Characterization of Metabolites. The primary objective of the metabolism study is to determine the principle metabolites of ATB-346 in humans and characterize their activity and pharmacokinetic profile. The study will be conducted in approximately 25 healthy volunteers and is anticipated to commence this quarter and should take 8-10 weeks to complete.  Part 2: Validation of Effectiveness. The dose-ranging, efficacy study will be conducted in approximately 200 osteoarthritis patients. The primary objective of the study is to evaluate the efficacy of ATB-346 in reducing pain at three doses (versus control) and establish the lowest effective dose. The profile of each ATB-346 dosing cohort will be finalized based on the findings of the above-mentioned metabolism protocol. A top-line data read-out from this study is anticipated in second quarter of 2019.  Antibe expects that the full Phase 2 study with the metabolism protocol will cost roughly $3 million and will be funded with cash-on-hand. Clinical studies have indicated that ATB-346 is much more potent than naproxen and proposes that that one or more active metabolites contribute to the mechanism of action.  +++++  Well that wraps up another episode of Biotechnology Focus radio. Thanks for listening! Hope you all had a chance to get outside this past long weekend and take advantage of what’s left of summer. Maybe innovation will strike, and it will be your story I’m reading next! For the stories in full, check them out at biotechnologyfocus.ca. Until next time, from my desk to yours – this is Michelle Currie.  

Welcome to another episode of Biotechnology Focus radio. This week we are discussing some of the recent mergers and acquisitions that have been rocking the headlines, some recently awarded grants and how machines are moving fast. I am your host Michelle Currie, here to bring you the lowdown on the Canadian biotech scene.  +++++  Celgene, a biotech giant, has merged with and acquired Juno Therapeutics and their leading blockbuster drug cancer therapy in one of their largest deals ever. For a total of $9 billion, Celgene will pay $87 a share in cash for those not already owned by this corporation.  Celgene and Juno have been collaborating since June 2015 under which the two companies would leverage T cell therapeutic strategies to develop treatments for patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases with an initial focus on CAR-T and TCR technologies. In April 2016, Celgene exercised its option to develop and commercialize the Juno CD19 program outside of North America and China.  Juno develops cell-based cancer immunotherapies based on chimeric antigen receptor and high-affinity T cell (CAR-T cell) receptor technologies to genetically engineer T cells to recognize and kill cancer. Several product candidates have shown compelling clinical responses in clinical trials in refractory leukemia and lymphoma conducted to date.  This acquisition will position Celgene to become a preeminent cellular immunotherapy company with a platform to be at the forefront of future advances. JCAR017, a pivotal stage asset, with an emerging favorable profile in DLBCL, is expected to add approximately $3 billion in peak sales and significantly strengthen Celgene’s lymphoma portfolio, and JCARH125 will enhance Celgene’s campaign against BCMA (B-cell maturation antigen), a key target in multiple myeloma.  +++++  The global pharma industry is undergoing a dramatic transition from a quest for blockbusters to the design of a precision medicine based drug design. Artificial intelligence is one of the most prominent elements that has been adopted as part of the transition from a fully integrated pharmaceutical company model of drug design to extensive interaction with smaller innovative R&D companies as well as academic institutions.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the activity devoted to making machines intelligent, and intelligence is that quality that enables an entity to function appropriately and with foresight in its environment (definition proposed by Nils J. Nillson, Stanford U.). Even though there are numerous definitions for AI, this one fits nicely into the goal of using machine learning for improving the rate of success in the design of novel and cost-effective therapeutics.  One of the primary reasons that AI has such a great potential in drug development is that there is a huge amount of health data available right now in the public health system. Clinical trials’ data, electronic medical records (EMR), genetic profiles and much more is the wealth representing the notion of BIG DATA in healthcare. The main challenge regarding the processing of big data is the need to process it in a meaningful and cost-effective fashion. That is why training a machine to fulfill the task becomes so attractive. Selecting and adjusting the right algorithms is the first essential step but once it is in place, training machines to find optimal patterns between the structure of “druggable molecules” and their optimal activity is within reach.  Canada has established a leadership position in training of machines to learn how to perform complex tasks, in a relatively short period of time. Based on recent commitments to the space, it is expected that we will witness in the foreseeable future designs of novel and much more specific therapeutics with higher potency and lesser side effects. The prospects are quite encouraging in light of the shift global pharma industry is adopting towards precision medicine. That shift will rely on sifting through patients’ medical records. Canadian AI machines are learning fast and are expected to become a key player in advancing academic concepts into standard and streamlined processes and organizations. In Ontario, the University of Toronto has emerged as a world-leading hub for research and entrepreneurship in this area. A potent combination of long-standing academic research in conjunction with the adoption of machine learning methodologies have already proven to be game-changing opportunities. Interactive approaches to computer science and medical research, combined with emerging best in class entrepreneurship programming and training is already yielding some fascinating fruits in the area of AI for drug discovery.  Companies like Structura Bio are taking the complex computational challenge of reducing noisy images from cryo-electron microscopes into readable highly accurate 3D structures of proteins and are doing what used to take a server room filled with computers a week, in a matter of seconds. Similarly, Phenomic AI (a recently incorporated UTEST company) uses a technique called deep learning to analyze data from high-throughput phenomic screens to analyze cell and tissue phenotypes in microscopy data with incredible accuracy. It holds out the potential for eliminating human intervention in the assessment of all that data. In some cases, companies like Deep Genomics and Atomwise are going all the way by leveraging their respective AI technologies to become drug discovery engines themselves. Our awareness of the impact of the AI revolution in drug discovery is already enormous and we’re only at the beginning of its adoption cycle. Future advances in Canada will be buoyed further by strong academic and institutional foundations that have been put in place to assist Canada in sustaining this advantage. The Vector Institute, as an example, was established in 2017 in partnership with Canada’s largest companies and the Federal and Provincial Government’s to attract and retain world-leading research talent and to promote cutting-edge research in the field.  Recently, partnerships have been established between the MaRS Innovation research healthcare ecosystem (UHN, Sickkids, Sunnybrook) with global players in the space of machine learning based drug design and developments. Partnerships with Schrödinger and Evotec have been established to capture the enormous potential of “fishing in the pond” of EMR’s rich source of unraveling the tissue/cellular architecture as a baseline for the discovery of novel disease targets, which thereby establishes a mechanism for better drugs.  The field of AI in the service of medical research is still in its infancy, but the initial avalanche of results is already starting to give us an idea of the great potential that machine learning can offer to those embarking on advancing drug development. Reducing screening times, aiding new drug candidates and finding the most effective drugs for specific diseases at a speed that humans cannot achieve is compelling, and we believe that AI will increasingly become part of the medical landscape. Once hurdles such as data standardized collection and storage as well as data privacy concerned are addressed, it is expected that we will witness an exponential inclination in the implementation of machine learning as a powerful tool in the design of more potent drugs with lesser side-effects. The FDA and Health Canada are encouraging pharmaceutical companies to join the choir.  To conclude, rephrasing from Eric Topol of the Scripps Research Institute (CNBC, May 2017), “The potential of artificial intelligence has probably the biggest impact of any type of technology on healthcare.”  +++++  Two of Canada’s largest producers of cannabis have struck a deal after months of negotiations and a hostile takeover bid. The board of directors and the special committee of the CanniMed board have agreed to support a new offer made by Aurora for the acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of CanniMed not owned by Aurora.   Terry Booth, the CEO of Aurora Cannabis says, “We are very pleased to have come to terms with CanniMed on this powerful strategic combination that will establish a best-in-class cannabis company with operations across Canada and around the world.”   The new offer for CanniMed is approximately $1.1 billion based on Aurora’s implied share price of $12.65. The maximum amount of cash available under the amended offer will be $140 million, and the number of Aurora shares to be issued will be between approximately 72 million and 84 million. Assuming maximum cash elections, each CanniMed shareholder would receive $5.70 in cash and 2.9493 Aurora shares.  Despite CanniMed filing a law suit against Aurora earlier this month, this deal provides the optimum outcome for both companies.  +++++  The Ottawa Hospital has been awarded $12.7 million in the most recent project grant competition from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The grant funding will be going to sixteen research groups at the hospital who are in affiliation with the University of Ottawa. This represents an enormous success rate of 30 per cent, doubling the national average.  The new funding will provide researchers the much-needed capital to delve deeper into their studies ranging on a plethora of subjects – anywhere from oncolytic viruses as immunotherapy treatments, using a holistic approach to improving the quality of life for the homeless, to understanding the role of liquid metabolism in the brain.  “I’m delighted that our researchers have once again achieved such a high success rate,” says Dr. Duncan Stewart, executive vice president of research at The Ottawa Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. “These new research projects have the potential to redefine the future of health-care, both at home and around the world.”  The Ottawa Hospital has scored above the national average in CIHR grant competitions for the past several years, including 2015, 2016, and 2017. This research centre shows great promise and innovative studies for the years ahead.  For the summaries of all the projects please visit biotechnologyfocus.ca   +++++  Well that wraps up another episode of Biotechnology Focus radio. If you have any questions, comments or story ideas, please contact us at press@promotivemedia.ca, and don’t forget to follow us on our twitter handle @BiotechFocus. From my desk to yours – this is Michelle Currie.    

Canadian and International Research Teams Receive Funding to Promote Child Health by Preventing Chronic Disease

In this interview, Dr. Olga Theou and Dr. Kenneth Rockwood discuss their research looking at the association between sedentary time and mortality across levels of frailty. Olga Theou is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Dalhousie University and geriatric medicine scientist for the Nova Scotia Health Authority. Dr. Kenneth Rockwood is a professor of geriatric medicine and neurology at Dalhousie University, a CIHR researcher, and a staff physician. Along with their co-authors, they published a research article in CMAJ. Full article (open access): www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.161034 ----------------------------------- Subscribe to CMAJ Podcasts on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, Instacast, or your favourite aggregator. You can also follow us directly on our SoundCloud page. Our podcasts are also released on www.cmaj.ca and on www.cmajblogs.com.

The number of Lyme disease cases has increased drastically in the past five years. Dr. Marc Ouellette, scientific director of CIHR's Institute of Infection and Immunity, chats about research that will soon be undertaken on Lyme disease.

In this interview, Dugald Seely, ND, founder and executive director of the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre, describes the research projects presently underway at the center. He also describes the pragmatic research design that is presently helping to advance the field of integrative research and he discusses the future of integrative cancer research. Approximate listening time: 16 minutes About the Expert Dugald Seely ND, MSc, FABNO, leads the clinical practice and cancer research program for theOttowa Integrative Cancer Centre (OICC). In addition to his clinical role as a naturopathic doctor he also serves as the director of research & clinical epidemiology at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, affiliate investigator for the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and board member for the Society for Integrative Oncology. Seely completed his Master of Science in cancer research at the University of Toronto and is a Fellow of the American Board of Naturopathic Oncology (FABNO). As a clinician scientist, Dugald has been awarded competitive grant and trainee funding from CIHR, CBCRA, the SickKids Foundation, the Lotte and John Hecht Memorial Foundation, the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation, and the Gateway for Cancer Research Foundation.

This week on the On Your Mind Neuroscience Podcast:  Coming at you from three provinces! We talk about the future of CIHR funding, why the Chinese are hacking science agencies, and how Kathryn has been an author on four papers without even knowing it. Then how changes in dopamine projections change the epigenetics of their downstream targets?  For links to everything we talked about today and full show notes head to www.onyourmind.ca/funding-projections

ICWS, Lars Waldorf (Director, CIHR), Carla Ferstman (Director, REDRESS), Don Webster (ICTR prosecutor), Klaas de Jonge (Former director of gacaca research, PRI), Carina Tertsakian (Author, Le Chateau: The lives of prisoners in Rwanda)

ICWS, Lars Waldorf (Director, CIHR), Carla Ferstman (Director, REDRESS), Don Webster (ICTR prosecutor), Klaas de Jonge (Former director of gacaca research, PRI), Carina Tertsakian (Author, Le Chateau: The lives of prisoners in Rwanda)

A partnership between health services researchers from Queen's University and the University of Ottawa, a community nursing agency and a home care authority in Ottawa led to major improvements in the quality of care for people with leg ulcers. The synthesis of both external and local evidence played a key role in the adoption of an evidence-based protocol and provided the critical context to support a significant reorganization of the existing service delivery model. This case demonstrates that, with a collaborative partnership approach, systematic and transparent research processes can be rapidly developed to support policy change.