On Friday September 23, Dr. Leonard Syme will present his topic entitled “Community Inter-ventions to Prevent Disease: Some Work, Most Don't, Can We Do Better?” Dr. Syme has been Pro-fessor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley since 1968. Prior to that, he spent eleven years in the US Public Health Service doing research on coronary heart disease and as Ex-ecutive Secretary of an Epidemi-ology Study Section at the Na-tional Institute of Health. He has done research on heart disease and stroke among Japanese migrants to Hawaii and California, on the relationship between social sup-port and disease in California populations, on hypertension and other conditions among San Fran-cisco bus drivers, and on coronary heart disease among British civil servants. During the last ten years, Dr. Syme has spent most of his time developing interventions. These intervention efforts have

been based on social epidemi-ologic research showing the importance of control on health. The Wellness Guide project has developed an 80 page book helping people understand the options they have for solving life problems and directing them to community resources. This Guide has been used in a variety of populations including people moving from welfare to work, people with disabilities, and low income families. An on-line version of this material is now being prepared.

Dr. Syme has been a vis-iting professor at Teikyo Uni-versity in Japan, at the Univer-sity of London and York Uni-versity in England, and at Mel-bourne University in Australia. He has written 2 books and has published about 150 papers. He has received an award from the American College of Physi-cians for Outstanding Contribu-tions to Preventive Medicine

and an award from the California Senate for Meritorious Contribu-tions to the State. He also chairs "Capitalizing on Social and Behavioral Research to Improve the Public's Health," a Com-mittee at the Institute of Medicine.

CPHR Fall Seminars

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Produced by Diana Fedosoff and Van Tran.

Sponsored by:

Dr. Leonard Syme

CPHR Train-ing Program Fall Seminars

1 - 2

Strategic Training Fellows(STF's) profiles and achieve-ments

3 - 5

CPHR Train-ing Program Alumni

6

Conferences 7

Inside this issue:

Part of CPHR’s curriculum are the day-long seminars which are used to introduce Stra-tegic Training Fellows (STFs) to specific population health content, including research meth-odology and practice and policy contexts, that primarily are the expertise of the visiting schol-ars. This year’s seminars are taking place on September 23 and October 20/21st.

(See CPHR’s website for Seminars details. http://www.cphr/curriculum/seminars.htm)

Dr. Kathi Wilson will be pre-senting at both the University of Sas-katchewan (October 20) and the Uni-versity of Regina (October 21). Kathi Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and a research associate with the McMaster University Institute of En-vironment and Health. Her research interests focus on the intersections of

health and place. She has a long-standing interest in various dimensions of population health, including utilization of and access to health care services, the determinants of Aborigi-nal peoples' health, as well the links between neighbourhood environments and well-being. Her doctoral dissertation, which examined the link between health and perceptions of

environment for First Nations' peoples in Ontario, was awarded the Robin P. Armstrong Memorial Prize for Excellence in Native Studies by The Canadian Associa-tion of Geographers, Statistics Canada, and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. She was awarded a CIHR post-doctoral research fellowship to explore geographic variations in access to health care across Canada. Dr. Wilson's current research, funded by CIHR, seeks to explore and explain the extent to which inequalities in access to health care services exist for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians living in urban areas and to determine the relative role of these inequalities in shap-ing health disparities. Her work has been published in a wide variety of journals including Social Science and Medicine, Health and Place, The Canadian Geographer, International Journal of Health Services, and Health Policy.

CPHR Fall Seminars (Cont)

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Page 2

Dr. Kathi Wilson

Books of Interest Reid, Colleen (2004). The Wounds of Exclusion: Poverty, Women’s Health and Social Justice. Edmonton, Alberta: Qual Institute Press.

This book is based on Reid’s PhD dissertation. She won the 2002-03 International Institute for Qualitative Methodology Dissertation Award. The book includes explorations of the major concepts of exclusion, poverty, social justice, power, legitimacy and women’s health. Her methodology was based on feminist action research. She concludes her book with implications and recommendations.

Raphael, Dennis (2003). When Social Policy is Health Policy: Why increasing poverty and low income threatens Canadian’s health and health care system. Canadian Re-view of Social Policy, 51, p. 9-28. In his article, Raphael explores the mechanisms by which poverty con-tributes to cardiovascular disease (e.g., material deprivation, excessive psychosocial stress, and adoption of health threatening behaviors). He describes social determinants of health, draws correlations between income distribution and health using primarily Canadian data, explains some of the health care costs of cardiovascular disease resulting from poverty, describes barriers to creating links between social policy and health policy, explains barriers to effective action by the health sector, and presents implications for the social welfare sector.

Recommended by Gloria DeSantis PhD student at the University of Regina

and CPHR Strategic Training Fellow

I joined the training fellow-ship with the Community and Population Health Research Train-ing Program (CPHR) in September 2004. I am also fortunate to have received a scholarship from the Community-University Institute of Social Research (CUISR) at the University of Saskatchewan. I am grateful to my CPHR mentor Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine, (who is also my supervisor) for encouraging and supporting my involvement in both of these fine organizations.

Over the last thirty years, my career has evolved from a prac-ticing registered nurse to teacher, and administrator. I further trained as a midwife, received baccalaure-ate and master’s degrees. Through-out this time, I have had questions related to these experiences that I have wanted to investigate in a manner that will impact public health policy and prevention pro-grams. To that end, I am presently enrolled as a PhD student in Com-munity Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan.

In the past two years, I com-pleted two CUISR internships: Evalua-tion of the Postpartum Depression Support Program and an Evaluability Assessment of the Healthy Mother Healthy Baby Program (HMHB). HMHB is a local program for high-risk pregnant women and is also avail-able to all pregnant teens in the health region. I also worked as a Research Assistant with Saskatchewan Popula-tion Health and Education Research Unit (SPHERU) on the evaluation of KidsFirst, a provincial program for addicted mothers and their families.

It was through these projects that my research area crystallized. While most women, their families, and caregivers know about the potentially tragic consequences of Postpartum Depression, very few people seem to be aware of the possibility or implica-tions of depression during pregnancy – Antenatal Depression.

Now that I have completed all of my PhD course work, my focus is on data collection for the main study which is underway; this includes

HMHB and a local high-risk clinic that re-quested partici-pation in the study to further understand ante-natal depression, and associated risk factors and behaviors in their clients. I recently completed the required CPHR course “Perspectives in Population Health”, this excellent class has added the population health and policy focus that will help me ensure that the re-search findings will be put into practice.

I have been giving many talks throughout our community, in Prince Albert, Ottawa, and Nova Scotia about antenatal depression. This fall I will be presenting at the Best Start Conference, the 25th Anniversary of the Saskatche-wan Institute for Prevention of Handi-caps in Saskatoon and at the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetrical, and Neonatal Nursing Conference in Mont-real.

ANGELA BOWEN - PhD Student University of Saskatchewan - CPHR Strategic Training Fellow

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Page 3

On May 16th, Brandace Winquist successfully completed her PhD comprehensives which officially made her a "PhD Candidate." Brandace is beginning her third year of her PhD degree pro-gram within the Community Health and Epidemiology (CH & EP) department. She received her Masters of Science in CH & EP in 2003 and her Bachelor's Degree with Honors in Sociology in 2000.

Congratulations, Brandace!

See CPHR’s website for more detailed information on our STF.

Achievement

Brandace Winquist (PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan and CPHR Strategic Training Fellow)

Kinesiology. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the program and awarded a devolved scholarship. To my delight, I grew to love the University of Saskatche-wan, Saskatchewan and Canada.

During my Masters I took a health promotion course offered by the depart-ment of Community, Health and Epidemi-ology. The course delved into many areas of community and population health such as different health models, participatory research and public health policy. The course also provided a rare chance for me to attend lectures from some inspirational and outstanding researchers in the field such as Dr. Ron Labonte. It definitely ig-nited a passion for population health re-search and I began to see where my re-search might fit within this multi-disciplinary area.

I successfully defended my Masters degree in November 2004 and was fortu-nate enough to receive a CPHR training fellowship for my PhD studies. I say for-tunate because the scholarship not only provided financial support but also a very unique training experience. Part of the experience was the opportunity to take part in a course called Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Population Health Re-search. The course explored a variety of population health issues, including re-search methods, key findings, and appli-cations relevant to population health. The diversity of research interests that the pre-senters, mentors, and CPHR training fel-lows brought to the table made for stimu-lating discussion. The training program truly encourages collaboration and under-standing across disciplines. I am looking forward to applying what I have learned thus far to my PhD work and to my future research endeavors. My PhD thesis, al-though in the early stages, aims to explore

the determinants of pediatric health and obesity.

I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to attend and present at an array of scientific meetings across North America. I am especially excited about pre-senting a paper at the Federation of Canadian Demographers (FCD) conference in Montreal this No-vember. The objectives of the Federation are to promote research and the scientific study of demog-raphy throughout Canada, to foster cooperation and international ex-changes on questions of population and development, and to enrich the knowledge of Canadians on popu-lation questions. I also feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to write and publish scientific papers. For this, I must thank my Supervisor and CPHR mentor, Dr. Adam Baxter-Jones, and the CPHR training program for funding my PhD which allows me to spend my time on academic rather than financial pursuits. At present I have three papers and one book chapter accepted for publica-tion and three papers submitted for publication.

I feel very grateful to have been chosen to be part of the CPHR training experience and would like to thank the students, mentors and staff at CPHR for making the training program both enlightening and enjoyable. I am looking forward to the upcoming presentations, seminars and retreats offered through CPHR.

LAUREN SHERAR - PhD Student University of Saskatchewan - CPHR Strategic Training Fellow

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Page 4

My name is Lauren Sherar and I am a first year PhD student in the College of Kinesiology at the Univer-sity of Saskatchewan. I received my undergraduate degree in Sport and Exercise Science and Biology, from Nottingham Trent University, UK. Upon finishing my undergraduate degree I realized that my true passion laid in the overlap between Sport and Exercise Science (Kinesiology) and health research and so I started to ex-plore postgraduate opportunities in the UK with these interests in mind. It soon became clear that many of the opportunities in England involved research on elite athletes making the link to the area of applied health re-search difficult. As a result I decided to look for opportunities further away. I explored graduate schools in the United States, Australia and in Canada, where I came across the re-search of Dr. Adam Baxter-Jones and the University of Saskatchewan. The collaborative nature of the College of Kinesiology and the strong emphasis on health and wellbeing made it a perfect fit (I have to admit that at that point I was unaware of the cool tem-peratures of a Saskatoon winter). I was especially interested in the pedi-atric longitudinal studies that had been conducted within the College of

I am a PhD Student in the Department of Sociology at the Uni-versity of Saskatchewan. Currently beginning the second year as a Stra-tegic Training Fellow, I entered the program as a returning student to University after practicing law for nine years. I have an undergraduate degree in Sociology from the Uni-versity of Saskatchewan, completed my Bachelor of Laws in 1994 and am a certified mediator. I acceler-ated into the PhD program in Sep-tember 2004 after completing my course load for my Masters degree and taking time off to have my youngest daughter, Nicole, in 2000 and my youngest son, Maxime, in 2002. This brings my total child amount to 4 and stopping (I have another son, Paul (8), and a daugh-ter, Marie-Madeleine (6)). My fam-ily commitments make my academic activities challenging to say the least (I realize that my life could be a study in itself on work-life balance) but I have a fabulous spouse (Bernard) and have learned that effi-ciency is borne of necessity!

Coming back to University, I was looking for something differ-ent, either to change my career path or augment it. I have always been interested in issues surrounding youth and when Saskatchewan Health approached Dr. Harley Dick-inson and Dr. Bernard Schissel of the Department of Sociology to pro-pose a research project surrounding gambling issues in youth, I was for-

tunate enough to write the proposal which was accepted and funded in September 2004. Given the direct link to population health that ac-

companies the topic, Dr. Harley Dick-inson encouraged me to investigate CPHR Training Program as a source of funding and support for my PhD which is in compliment to this re-search. As health, policy and an at-risk population are integral to my pro-ject and are also themes that are im-portant in population health research, the CPHR Program seemed almost too good to be true, not only for the financial support but also for the edu-cational and mentoring opportunities that came with it. I am very grateful to be part of such a unique and re-spected program and am extremely appreciative for the opportunity to be not only part of an interdisciplinary training program, but to see it in ac-tion. The ‘Perspectives in Population Health’ course provided through the CPHR Training Program was an in-valuable educational opportunity as, for me just coming back to Univer-sity, it opened up a world of academic subject matter and themes that are both fascinating and captivating. The CPHR program thus far has been ex-ceptional and I look forward to work-ing and developing relationships with other students and academics from diverse backgrounds.

In addition to my responsibili-ties with SPHERU this past year, I was able to progress nicely on my research, working with the Behavioral Ethics Board to receive approval for my doctoral project as well as the Sas-katchewan Health project, and under-taking much of the research that will be integral to my dissertation. I have made several presentations to various high schools throughout the province with respect to the survey research as well as traveling with our research

team throughout the province to conduct focus groups. I will still need to conduct additional research for my project, however, at this point I will need to begin to con-centrate on my comprehensives which I will write early next year. I also completed GSR 989.6 Intro-duction to University Teaching, which offers and introduction to the philosophical and methodologi-cal aspects of teaching, and as such, provides opportunities for self-reflection (philosophy) and for practical teaching experience (methodology). This was a full year course in which I completed a Teaching Dossier. As both courses that I took were web-based, I also investigated teaching and learning with WebCT further, attending a conference in Edmonton this spring. Early this year, I applied for funding through SSHRC and received notification that I was awarded a SSHRC Doctoral Fel-lowship that will commence in September 2005 to August, 2008.

My sincere thank you to the CPHR Training Program, Dr. Sylvia Abonyi for facilitating such a great class and Diana Fedosoff for her patience with all of my questions and assistance for every-thing else. I look forward to seeing everyone in the fall.

CORINA FARBACHER - PhD Student University of Saskatchewan - CPHR Strategic Training Fellow

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Page 5

CPHR Training Program’s Alumni

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Page 6

During the past two years, I have been supported by the Community and Population Health Research Training Program as a Stra-tegic Training Fellow. I have had the op-portunity to be supported both financially as well as academically. When I first began my graduate program in 2003, I was a nov-ice researcher for the most part, and felt somewhat intimidated by the scope of the requirements that lay ahead of me. How-ever, I was very fortunate to have a cohort of mentors and scholars within the CPHR or-ganization to support my aspirations and aid in the development of my investigative skills. CPHR fostered an environment that was conducive to interdisciplinary network-ing and support. I was able to look at my

research from a variety of perspectives, being privy to other stu-dents and academics that were knowledgeable in areas outside of my own. In addition to my graduate program within the Faculty of Education, I was also able to partake in learning activities within CPHR that enhanced my ability to understand theory, con-cepts, research methods and tools from a population health per-spective that were pertinent to the completion of my thesis. Cur-rently, I am preparing for my defence and looking forward to opening a new chapter of learning in my life as I begin the doc-toral program in Educational Psychology.

I have been involved in Public Health since 1981. After a long time of working in the field I decided to further my education. I was accepted into the Community Health and Epidemiology (CH&EP) program. While working on my gradu-ate degree I was made aware of the possibility of the Work Sabbatical Program associated with CPHR. This award allowed me to attend educa-tion sessions and participate in the Interdiscipli-nary Perspectives class by providing my em-ployer with funding to permit me to attend the sessions.

I am currently in the throes of finalizing my penultimate version of my thesis; my committee did not shred my first rough draft; I am grateful. I hope to defend sometime early in the New Year.

I have also had the pleasure of bringing the work place perspective to the CPHR group and to that end I have taught the Community as a Health Determinant session last February and will do so again next term. I feel very lucky to have been made a part of this program. The writings, discussions, and networking I have been exposed to have all made my academic involvement and my career much richer. My in-volvement in my quest for a Master of Science degree in CH&EP has led me to a Supervisory position in the Health Region that addresses the non-medical determinants of health. Moreover, I sit on many boards and committees that also have population health at the heart of their mandates. My plan is to stay involved at various levels in the delivery of population health initiatives. This has been a very exciting journey for me; one I will cherish always.

I am a master's student in Commu-nity Health and Epidemiology and have been a Strategic Training Fellow in the CPHR training program for the last two years. My thesis is a comparative case study focusing on the impact of Struc-tural Adjustment Programs on the health of women and children in Argentina and Uruguay.

After a long struggle with the re-search and analysis stage of my thesis I have finally begun the writing phase and am planning to defend in early December. I have recently been awarded a Popula-tion and Public Health Award and as a part of that award I will be presenting my thesis at the Population and Public Health Conference in Ottawa in September and

publishing my thesis in the Canadian Journal of Public Health. In November I will also be presenting my thesis at the Canadian Conference for International Health. I am excited to have the opportunity over the next few months to see the results of the work I have done come to fruition and I am very grateful for the mentoring and support I have received from my supervisors, committee and from the training program.

Since successfully defending my master’s thesis in September of 2004, I have been busy completing my first year of a doctoral program in the Col-lege of Kinesiology, at the University of Saskatchewan. I spent this past summer studying for my PhD compre-hensive exams, which I write from September 6th-13th. Luckily, I have three academic conferences that I will be attending in the fall; I am sure I will need this time to unwind.

In my last newsletter update I indicated that I had been awarded a scholarship by the Public Health and Agricultural Rural Ecosystem (PHARE) graduate training program. Since then, I have also been fortunate in that I was awarded a CIHR Doctoral

Award through the Institute of Gender and Health (IGH) and the Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH). Both of these scholarships have a population and/or public health component and I feel that my experience as a CPHR strategic training fellow has provided me with a foundation to continue working in this area.

Jody Burnett Masters

Thesis: “ The Aboriginal family members’ experience of problem gambling.”

Tara-Leigh Flemming Masters

Thesis: “Understanding the meaning of social physique anxiety in Aboriginal adolescent females.” ”

Terrance Gibson Work Sabbatical

Policy Report:

“How do health regions integrate a population health approach into the design and delivery of services?”

Helen Oliver Masters

Thesis: “Structural adjustment programs in Argentina and Uruguay.”

We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please send them to:

Comments or Suggestions:

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( 306 ) 33 7 — 2229

C H P R . U O FR@UR EGIN A . CA

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(306 ) 96 6 — 7942

C H P R . U O FS@ USAS K. CA

CPHR Training Program’s Newsletter September 2005

Page 7

For more information about

CPHR Training Program

WWW.CPHR .CA

I took this question with me to the 12th Biennial Canadian Social Welfare Policy Conference, Forging Social Futures: Cana-dian and International Perspectives, held at the University of New Brunswick in Freder-icton in June 2005. In essence, I was hop-ing to meet other people like myself who have one foot in the population health camp and the other foot in the social welfare

camp. After all, the literature over the years has expanded immensely with the following topics: social policy is health policy; socio-economic status affects health and well-being; social cohesion is linked to health; social integration and in-clusion affects people’s health; and neighbourhoods impact people’s health. So I was sure I would find some like-minded people at the conference.

On the first day of the conference, I presented the paper, “Exploring the public policy advocacy role of the voluntary social service sector using a population health framework”. The more light-hearted title I gave my presentation was, “Is fighting for public policy good for your health?” My paper was based on a review of literature on the advocacy work of voluntary sector social service organizations involved in pub-lic policy making, social determinants of health, and social change. Voluntary organizations are known to work with populations most acutely affected by negative social determi-nants of health. It is the participation of marginalized popula-tions in policy processes, supported by voluntary organiza-tion staff, that can lead to a myriad of positive outcomes in-cluding enhanced sense of well-being, empowerment, and social connectedness.

During the remainder of that day and the ensuing days, I went looking for “population health”. I attended many small and large group sessions including a new “social architec-ture” for our 21st century realities, the challenge of national standards in federal social policies, examining New Zea-

Where are all the “population health” researchers and policy makers?

Gloria DeSantis (PhD student at the University of Regina and CPHR Strategic Training Fellow)

land’s social development model which looked a lot like Canada’s healthy communities model, Canada’s ranking in the OECD list regarding social policies, the addition of “social condition” to the New Brunswick Human Rights Act, and cross-Canada evaluations of early years programs, to name but a few.

I also checked the entire list of concurrent sessions that I could not attend - just to be sure I had not missed any population health sessions. There were many top-ics integrally related to population health, but not la-beled as such, including welfare income analyses, early childhood development, labour policy as critical social policy, feminist anti-violence campaigns, living with a disability on government income assistance, homeless-ness, the human right to adequate food, economic in-clusion, and literacy. There was one session which seemed to focus on health with presenters covering topics like the reality of primary health care, equitable access to health care and socioeconomic determinants of positive childhood development in British Colum-bia.

In the end, I was wrong about who and what I would find at the conference. I did not find many ex-plicit links to population health at the conference nor was the discourse of population health prevalent. However, having said this, I had some fascinating con-versations with conference delegates which did not begin explicitly as conversations about population health, but most of these conversations drifted into dis-cussions about healthy communities.

In conclusion, the conference was well worth the time, effort and money spent to participate. I received some very good feedback on my paper and had the chance to ask others about their research using a popu-lation health lens.

Written by Gloria DeSantis