Teams awarded $3.75 million for collaborative research

Feature Stories | 25 May 2023

The original version of this story was published in The Queen's Gazette. Pictured: Drs. Karen Yeates (Medicine) and James Reynolds (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences)

Two Queen’s Health Sciences' teams have secured $3.75 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) have announced their latest round of Team Grants. Intended to support interdisciplinary and collaborative research that optimizes health outcomes during transitions in care, team grants are funded around specific healthcare issues facing Canadians.

Learn more about the funded projects:

Karen Yeates (Medicine) has been awarded $2.5 million from the CIHR and Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) call for research into Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Prevention. The funding over five years will support her team’s STOP NCDs project focused on the development of health resources within remote Tanzanian communities. The team of Canadian and Tanzanian researchers along with policy makers and decisions makers from Tanzania’s Ministry of Health will evaluate and adapt HIV treatment strategies, extending them to treat cardiovascular diseases through the identification of individuals displaying risk factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

The program aims to provide low-cost health insurance to those with cardiovascular risk factors and connect patients to interventions through text messaging and voice recordings. Regional nurses will be provided with cost-effective digital training, allowing them to identify cardiovascular risk factors and track patient progress. Nurses will also be provided with further training to allow them to prescribe medications and treat patients through risk factor management. This collaborative effort with Tanzanian public health officials will support the use of the most cost-effective and sustainable strategies to impact health outcomes.

James Reynolds (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences) and collaborators are receiving $1.25 million over five years to fund the Infant and Early Mental Health (IEMH) Care Pathways Project. Supported by CIHR’s call to develop Mental Health in the Early Years Implementation Science, his team will evaluate the effectiveness of IEMH Care Pathways model in Canadian communities in the prevention and treatment of early childhood mental health disorders. The program will incorporate decades of previous research regarding early mental health and its importance in long-term wellbeing.

This research effort will also assess the IEMH Core Component Framework, a tool used by community organizations to determine the strength of their own IEMH programs and prioritize areas of improvement. The critical analysis will be used to create a more effective and systematic framework for Canadian communities to follow when developing their own IEMH pathways. As a result, this research will enable a better understanding of the necessary responses to support children displaying risks of poor mental health outcomes.

For more information about the CIHR Team Grants, visit the website.

Teams awarded $3.75 million for collaborative research

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