Welcome to SPHERU
The Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit is a bi-university health research unit based at the Universities of Regina and Saskatchewan. Since 1999, SPHERU has established itself as a leader in cutting edge population health research that not only looks at what and the why of health inequities -– but also how to address these and take action.
What’s Happening at SPHERU
Summer Institute: Weaving the Tapestry
The Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre (IPHRC), Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU), and the Prairie Community-Based HIV Research Program joined together to host the Community-Based Health Research (CBHR) Summer Institute: Weaving the Tapestry.
The objective for the Summer Institute was to provide knowledge and build capacity through applied training in community-based research using a population health approach.
The event, held at the University of Regina June 19 to 24, 2011, was well attended, and formal accreditation was available for graduate students in western Canada under the Western Deans Agreement.
There were expert presentations, hands-on workshops, case studies, keynote speakers, and group discussions with leading practitioners. The themes included: building partnerships; research methods; information management; and knowledge translation and communications.
Dr. Charlotte Reading from the University of Victoria's new School of Public Health and Social Policy delivered the keynote presentation on community-based health research. Filmmaker and Gemini nominee Andrée Cazabon was the featured presenter for Community Conversations Night, which began with a viewing of her documentary Third World Canada. Her films have appeared on CBC Newsworld, TVA, Canal D, Radio-Canada and CBC Television. She is also a volunteer helping youth-at-risk and youth in foster care and has helped raise over $360,000 for youth in care.
The co-chairs of the planning committee were Dr. Bonnie Jeffery from SPHERU and Jo-Ann Episkenew from IPHRC. Other members of the planning committee included Sylvia Abonyi (SPHERU), Juanita Bacsu (SPHERU), Carrie Bourassa (IPHRC), Marissa Desjardins (IPHRC), Diana Fedosoff, (SPHERU), Paula Migliardi (Prairie Community-Based Research HIV Research Program) and Pammla Petrucka (SPHERU).
The Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF), Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU), Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Center (IPHRC), Prairie Community-Based HIV Research Program, University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) all provided funding and support.
Smart Cities, Healthy Kids study on YouTube
Does neighbourhood design affect how active children are?
That’s the question researchers from the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU) are asking in their three-year, multi-phase Smart Cities, Healthy Kids study in Saskatoon.
The province’s early childhood development network, kidSKAN, has produced a video about Smart Cities, Healthy Kids. The network is one of the many projects that fall under SPHERU Healthy Children’s research theme.
The video can be seen on kidSKAN’s YouTube channel and provides a good introduction to the project.
The SPHERU “Smart Cities” team has been looking at how Saskatoon’s neighbourhoods have developed over time and what design elements they include – the built environment – that encourage or discourage physical activity among children.
They’ve surveyed school children about their activity levels and measured actual activity levels, they’ve interviewed some of the kids and their parents about how they feel their neighbourhoods influence their activities, and had the kids take pictures – a process called photovoice – to document what helps or hinders active lifestyles.
There is more information on the Smart Cities Healthy Kids project on the kidSKAN site: an op-ed series that ran in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix; fact sheets; reports on the active living potential for each of the city’s neighbourhoods; and an introductory video on the Smart Cities, Healthy Kids sister study looking at Saskatoon’s food environment.
SPHERU’s Casebook looks at the best in KT
The newly released Innovations in Knowledge Translation: the SPHERU KT Casebook (edited by Fleur Macqueen Smith and Juanita Bacsu) is a cross-section of population health work and the innovative strategies used for sharing stories about this work.
The knowledge translation (KT) examples range from a music video for sharing healing stories of Aboriginal women’s drug addiction to a national symposium aimed at promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors among school-aged children in Trinidad and Tobago.
The Casebook is intended as a toolkit for academics, researchers, community practitioners, policy makers and others, and includes knowledge translation strategies, methods, and evaluations that highlight methods of KT evaluation and factors related to successful knowledge translation. It can also be downloaded at www.kidskan.ca.
SPHERU’s Macqueen Smith wins KT Award
Fleur Macqueen Smith, Knowledge Transfer Manager for SPHERU’s Healthy Children research team, was one of three national winners for the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health Knowledge Translation Awards.
She was honoured at the Canadian Public Health Association’s annual conference in Montreal last June for her work studying online communities of practice, and developing and testing a tool for building communities of practice, such as kidSKAN, the Saskatchewan Knowledge to Action Network.
“While I found that people like the convenience of connecting online, there’s no real substitute for meeting with people face-to-face,” Fleur says. “We’re making use of this knowledge in kidSKAN by hosting and partnering on events, and then documenting these events through videos and blog posts on our kidSKAN website and YouTube channel. This is a big province, with a small population, so it makes sense to use online methods to interact in between face-to-face meetings.”
Fleur gave a presentation on her work at the kidSKAN Connectors forum in May 2010. It is available the kidSKAN website. Her thesis is available on the University of Saskatchewan website. She also made a presentation on her work at the 2009 CPHA conference, and presented a poster about its impact on development of the kidSKAN community at the 2011 conference.
Team examines history of health inequities
Despite Saskatchewan’s long commitment to health care, it has some of the most extreme health outcome disparities in Canada, particularly when comparing First Nations with non-Aboriginal populations, or rural with urban populations.
SPHERU researchers James Daschuk, Gloria DeSantis, Paul Hackett, Tom McIntosh and Nazmi Sari are examining the history of health inequities in Saskatchewan by looking at a range of historical data collections. These include government documents, community-based organization archives, personal diaries, newspaper stories, and local histories in order to better understand the historical roots of these inequities.
They are taking digital photos and scans of this material to create a rich historical database. They will use quantitative data from early Department of Public Health annual reports on bed numbers, average length of hospital stays, numbers of doctors, maternity cases, types of diseases, and historical data tracing the changing nature and development of the provincial economy to understand how health changed over the twentieth century, and how it varied between communities.
By applying these cutting edge historical research techniques in combination with diverse analytical approaches available to this multidisciplinary health research team, the team will mine the data in order to gain new insights that could inform modern policy makers.
Other historical aspects of health inequities have been targeted for study. These include the varied effects of European settlement on Saskatchewan’s Aboriginal people, including comparisons between First Nations and Métis health, or between First Nations communities who entered treaty and those who did not. In addition, they will explore the changing economic and policy decisions that impact health outcomes such as the consequences of rural depopulation starting in the “Dirty ’30s” and centralization of health care technology; the transition from charity-driven health care to community-run health districts to full public health care; and the prevalence of chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes versus contagious diseases such as tuberculosis in remote northern communities such as Black Lake and Fond du Lac.
The researchers will identify the past patterns of health in Saskatchewan, how these have changed over time, and how key medical, policy, and other interventions influenced the inequitable distribution of health for specific sub-populations.
This project is supported by a Health Research Team Grant from the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF).
Hampton receives CURA grant
Dr. Mary Hampton, SPHERU research associate, was awarded a $1 million grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to conduct research into intimate partner violence.
This SSHRC grant was awarded through the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) program and will support research investigating research in the Prairie provinces and the Northwest Territories.
Hampton’s team, which includes SPHERU faculty members Bonnie Jeffery, Diane Martz and Paul Hackett, will work over five years on research to improve responses to intimate partner violence in rural and northern communities.
Hampton was also picked as one of two scholars recently appointed under the University of Regina’s new President's Chairs for Academic Excellence. She is the President's Chair for Academic Excellence in Scholarly Teaching and Community Outreach and will deliver annual public lectures about her work and continue to contribute to student engagement through both graduate student mentoring and undergraduate education.
Photo Credit(s):
Northern and Aboriginal Health (Paul Hackett), Rural Health (iStock photos), Intervention Research (Colleen Hamilton), Healthy Children (Brinnameade Smith), History of Health Inequities (University of Alberta Peel Collection)
Northern and Aboriginal Health (Paul Hackett), Rural Health (iStock photos), Intervention Research (Colleen Hamilton), Healthy Children (Brinnameade Smith), History of Health Inequities (University of Alberta Peel Collection)