A key lesson of that journey, she says, is that health is multifaceted, with needs based on physiological, emotional and social factors.

Halas, who was raised in Winnipeg, is an assistant professor in the School of Dental Hygiene at the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry, where her academic career started 22 years ago.

Her passion for primary health-care research took hold when, from 2006 to 2016, she was mentored by Dr. Alan Katz [M.Sc./95], working as a research associate in family medicine at the Max Rady College of Medicine. Spurred on by that experience, she completed her PhD in 2016 through UM’s individualized interdisciplinary program.

“I wanted to look not just at health or oral health, but to consider the whole person and the social world immediately outside of the person,” she says. “I thought listening to patients’ experiences and feedback could be pivotal for optimizing the way forward.”

Halas holds adjunct appointments in family medicine and community health sciences. In 2019, she was appointed the inaugural Rady Chair in Interprofessional Collaborative Practice.

Her current research focuses on how different health-care professionals collaborate in providing primary health care. Collaboration, she says, is not the easiest thing to study.

“Collaboration could be a consultation between two health-care providers, or a provider referring a patient to another professional, or people with a range of roles supporting a patient when they leave the hospital.  It’s complex.”

In one of her studies, Halas is looking at individuals experiencing homelessness who are hospitalized at St. Boniface Hospital with heart conditions. When they are discharged, where do they go? How can they settle back into the community in a vulnerable state?

“This is something physicians and social workers have struggled with. So how about something in between? Not a medical unit, but something that helps facilitate the process,” says Halas.

Her team is working with community advisors, including the Salvation Army, to create a hub for accessing peer support and community assistance after being discharged.

Halas is also studying how COVID-19 has changed the way patients access care. She is examining how health-care providers and patients have experienced virtual care, in order to get a sense of how virtual visits might be sustained.

“I was interested in learning about the shifting roles of health professionals during the pandemic. However, that was quite a challenge,” she says.

“Virtual visits are one piece of the health-care system’s capacity. To better examine workforce capacity, we need a data infrastructure with information on the health workforce regarding scope of work, training, and how health teams work together. This has been a long-standing issue in Canada, even predating the pandemic.” 

In all her research, Halas says she wants to focus on the individual patient.

“All the things we do as health-care providers and researchers affect individuals. How does that translate to meaningful and integrated patient care?”

The summer work was led by College of Nursing assistant professors Dr. Dan Nagel and Jamie Penner, along with Dr. Gayle Halas, Rady Chair in Interprofessional Collaborative Practice.

Nagel noted the centre is based around three foundational “pillars”: community-based health programs; family caregiver initiatives; and interprofessional education and practice. The idea is to create an environment where students work interprofessionally under the supervision of licensed professionals and clinical instructors to develop competencies and learn more about community health.

Nagel, Penner and Halas believe that many of the competencies that nursing students and other pre-licensure health professional students need can be learned in a community setting, such as establishing therapeutic relationships, assessments, chronic disease management, interprofessional practice and understanding research.

Nagel said the centre may become a physical entity within five or so years.

“It’s the same idea where we put students into clinical placements in hospitals, surgical units and long-term care facilities, except that they’re working in the community,” Nagel said.

He said the first program for the centre is being planned in collaboration with Southern Health-Santé Sud health region and will be an assessment, exercise and health education program for clients with mild to moderate respiratory disease.

“There are a lot of people in rural areas who have to come to Winnipeg for services, but if it’s for a duration of several weeks, that can be a huge burden for clients. And we know from chronic disease that we need to have ongoing contact with people in order to help support the,  understand and manage their illness,” he said. “And family caregivers of these clients need support, too.”

Eleven students were involved in the initiative over the summer, working on several different projects related to each of the pillars. Five students will continue on into the fall term.

Taylor Naccarato, a third-year nursing student, was involved in research into how student-led initiatives have been run in other North American jurisdictions. This fall she’ll be continuing to reach out to individuals involved in those projects to see how they work.

“What we want to learn is: Are they free services? Are they part of a curriculum or a partnership? Was it started by students?” she said.

Naccarato said she was drawn to the project because of the family caregiving aspect, something she has experience with in her own family.

“It’s interesting to see that there isn’t a lot of support out there for family caregivers,” she said. “There are a lot of programs that say they’re going to teach the caregivers skills to support the patient, but they never look at the caregiver’s mental health and well-being, which I think is really important to address to prevent caregiver burnout.”

Prabhnoor Osahan, a second-year medical student in the Max Rady College of Medicine, also has a personal interest in family caregiving. She was involved in a project to identify evidence-based resources and interventions that exist for family caregivers in rural communities. Another explored interventions that exist to train health-care providers how to assess and support family caregivers.

“As someone who’s been on both sides of the coin – as a family caregiver and now as a student in a professional health-care field – I can appreciate that there are not a lot of interventions that are currently in place for family caregivers,” she said.

Victoria Ploszay, a third-year respiratory therapy student in the College of Rehabilitation Sciences, led an epidemiology survey of the Southern Health-Santé Sud health region, comparing community health programming to other health regions in Manitoba.

“We came up with a list of potential programming that we think would be beneficial to the region,” she said.

Ploszay noted the inter-disciplinary aspect of the project removes the “hierarchical status” she’s seen on some of the teams she’s worked on.

 “All the students had an appreciation of one another, so it was nice to actually engage in dialogue and suggest opinions or recommendations without worrying about crossing some kind of barrier,” she said.

Third-year nursing student Mark Philip agreed that working on the project reinforced how important teamwork is to patient care.

“It’s not just doctors and nurses, it’s everyone on the health-care team – pharmacists, occupational therapists, respiratory therapists, physiotherapists. I feel like this has really hit home for me. It’s a collective effort,” he said.

Dr. Marcel Van Woensel was praised by his award nominators for his “firm commitment to both personal and professional ethics.”

Van Woensel grew up and still lives in Swan Lake, Man. He has practised in the nearby town of Somerset since earning his dental degree in 1994. He pursued his law degree part-time while practising dentistry, receiving it in 2002.

Accepting the award from the U of M Dental Alumni Association (UMDAA), he described himself as a deeply rural person. “Community, to me, is probably the most important thing,” he told the gathering of about 180 dentists, dental hygienists, students, faculty, staff and friends at the Fort Garry Hotel.

With a profound sense of duty to the dental profession, Van Woensel has contributed insight and guidance to a vast number of provincial and national boards, committees, task forces, commissions, regulatory groups and advisory councils. He served for nine years (2008 to 2017) as registrar of the Manitoba Dental Association.

As a part-time instructor at the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, Van Woensel teaches dental jurisprudence, which deals with the relationship between dentistry, ethics and the legal system.

“I’m a true believer in people,” he said. “I find that when you give people the opportunity to stand up and do the right thing, they almost always will.”

The U of M School of Dental Hygiene Alumni Association presented its Alumni of Distinction Award to Dr. Gayle Halas, a member of the Class of 1987 who has built upon her foundation in dental hygiene to become an outstanding health-care researcher, educator and leader.

While practising as a hygienist and raising her family, Halas completed her master of arts through online education. In 2006, she became a research associate in the department of family medicine at the Max Rady College of Medicine.

Thriving in this role for 10 years, Halas grew increasingly passionate about primary health-care research. In 2016, she completed her PhD through the U of M’s individualized interdisciplinary program and was appointed assistant professor and research director in family medicine.

In her acceptance speech, Halas said she has always been interested in patients’ emotional and cognitive responses to what they’re told by health-care professionals. She focused her doctoral research on patients’ engagement with health information.

“Beyond procedures, beyond particular diagnoses and beyond the biomedical, we need to care for the whole patient,” she said.

Dr. Colin Dawes, a British-trained professor emeritus in the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry who has been a fixture of the dental school for 54 years, was awarded honorary membership in the UMDAA.

Dawes is an internationally recognized expert on the role of saliva in oral health. Several speakers reminisced about Dawes asking colleagues and students to expectorate samples into vials for his research. Dawes got in on the humour, describing himself as a member of the “Salivation Army.”

Dr. Greg Smith spoke on behalf of the Dentistry Class of 1968. Ten members of the class were in attendance, celebrating the 50-year anniversary of their graduation. Smith noted that the class entered dental school in 1964 – the same year that Dawes joined the faculty. “I saw you tonight, and all of a sudden my salivary glands starting working overtime,” Smith quipped.

Smith recalled that the all-male Class of 1968 was required to attend dental school in white shirts, ties, suit jackets and polished shoes. Despite such strict regulations, he said, “We truly appreciate the training we received.”

For a patient with diabetes, it means planning every meal carefully, maintaining a healthy weight, getting regular exercise and sometimes even taking daily injections or pills.

“There’s an awful lot to learn,” says Dr. Gayle Halas, Research Director in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Department of Family Medicine.

With a research focus on patient education— the medical information patients receive and how they understand their condition—that makes it an ideal area of study. “I chose diabetes because it’s the kind of disease where the daily choices a patient makes can have a real impact on his or her own health.”

Halas earned her PhD in 2016 through the University of Manitoba’s Individualized Interdisciplinary Studies program, with advising from the College of Nursing. Through work on her thesis, she saw firsthand that changing the habits of a lifetime doesn’t just take grit and willpower—it requires solid information and a realistic plan. That’s where healthcare providers come in. Patient education is key to helping those living with chronic illness to manage their disease. “But just telling a patient what to do doesn’t always work,” says Halas, even when ignoring medical advice can be serious or even life-threatening. Her research goal was to understand what makes some patients disengage or check out during that vital part of the process.

What she’s learned is that it’s not always the information that’s problematic. First, a patient has to be ready to hear it. But sometimes it’s also how the message gets shared. “There are patients who went in ready to listen, but when the healthcare provider started pointing and wagging fingers, they tuned out,” said Halas.

Something as simple as a change in perspective can help. For example, one patient she spoke with had given up drinking but hadn’t yet stopped smoking. “If you look at it only through the lens of perfection, yes, she’s failing,” she said. “But if you consider it incrementally, that’s pretty impressive. She gave up drinking! That’s a big thing!”

Ultimately, Halas says the goal is a more person-centred approach. “I recognize that there’s a lot of pressure on the system and that everyone is busier than ever,” she says, “But not everyone who comes through the clinic door understands the same message the same way.” By modifying the approach to build on an individual’s experiences and successes, Halas says medical professionals may have greater success in helping patients better help themselves. “That’s our ultimate goal, no matter what the illness.”

Dr. Gayle Halas [PhD/16] Research Director, Department of Family Medicine, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences
Director, Manitoba SPOR Primary and Integrated Healthcare Innovation Network

Research: The dissonance and distance underlying patients’ cognitive engagement with educational health information.

The grants, awarded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Pan-Canadian SPOR Network in Primary and Integrated Healthcare Innovations, total more than $275,000. Additional partnership funding is being provided by Research Manitoba.

Tara Stewart, a CIH researcher and assistant professor in the U of M’s Max Rady College of Medicine, is a co-principal investigator on a $254,000 grant that will produce a comparative policy analysis of innovations that connect primary health care to social services, public health programs and community supports in Canada. The project involves a collaboration of research teams across eight provinces.

“This analysis will help inform on models for comprehensive management of patients with complex health and social care needs,” says Stewart.

The analysis will compare relevant policies in Canadian provinces and territories, identify publicly supported programs designed to connect across health and social care, and measure service integration design elements and implementation factors. The project received partner funding of $34,000 from Research Manitoba.

Bhupendrasinh Chauhan, a research associate with CHI Knowledge Synthesis and an assistant professor in the U of M’s College of Pharmacy, received a $25,000 grant for the project, “Interventions and Policies Influencing Primary Healthcare Professionals Managing Chronic Diseases: An Evidence Synthesis”.

The project will undertake a systematic review of existing literature to evaluate interventions and policies influencing primary health-care professionals, and the evidence that exists to inform the patient-centred medical home model to better manage patients with chronic diseases.

“Findings and insights from the project will be translated into evidence-based recommendations and shared with stakeholders who can further translate the findings to relevant policies to bring real practice change,” says Chauhan.

Ryan Zarychanski, associate director with CHI Knowledge Synthesis and an assistant professor ad clinician-scientist in the U of M’s College of Medicine, is a co-principal investigator alongside Chauhan. Their project received matching funds of $25,000 from Research Manitoba, the University of Manitoba Rady Faculty of Health Sciences’ College of Pharmacy, and the Saskatoon Health Research Foundation.

“Both research projects are the product of a network-approach, with each bringing together a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary team to address questions that are relevant to primary and integrated care” says Gayle Halas, director of Manitoba’s Primary and Integrated Healthcare Innovation Network (MPN) and assistant professor in the Max Rady College of Medicine. “We are very excited about the upcoming work of these researchers who are not only working within Manitoba, but across several provinces.”

MPN works collaboratively with CHI which also functions as Manitoba’s CIHR Support for Patient-Oriented Research SUPPORT Unit.

For more information:
Ilana Simon, U of M, 204-295-6777,  or email: ilana.simon@umanitoba.ca

For more information:
Amie Lesyk, George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, 204-594-5348, or email: alesyk@wrha.mb.ca

About The George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation
The George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation is a partnership between the University of Manitoba and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. CHI brings together leaders and practitioners from all disciplines in academia and practice to ensure the latest research and evidence are translated into improved patient outcomes, enhanced patient experiences and improved access to care for Manitobans. For more information please visit: chimb.ca.