This funding, part of the CIHR Operating Grant: National Women’s Health Research Initiative (NWHRI) Innovation Fund, will support two projects led Dr. Nathan Nickel and Dr. Garry Shen.

“This funding is vital for enhancing health-care services to address breastfeeding challenges new mothers may face wherever they live,” said Dr. Peter Nickerson, vice-provost (health sciences) and dean of the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences. “These projects are not only advancing important research, but also helping to create more inclusive and culturally sensitive care.”

Nickel, director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and associate professor of community health sciences, has received $597,960 over three years for his project, THRIVE: Transforming Healthcare through Research to Improve Breastfeeding and Advance Women’s Health.

Through this project, Nickel and his team are working to expand the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to community health centres across Canada.

BFHI has been successful in improving breastfeeding support in hospitals; now Nickel’s team is exploring new ways to bring those breastfeeding-friendly practices to community health settings.

The project also includes a coaching and mentoring program to help health-care centres build on their progress, with the goal of increasing breastfeeding rates and improving long-term health outcomes for women.

“This funding will allow us to create a comprehensive support network for breastfeeding in community health centres. Adapting the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative to these settings is key because it ensures that women who want to breastfeed get the support they need, no matter where they are receiving care,” said Nickel.

Shen, professor of internal medicine, has been awarded $600,000 over three years for his project, Protecting and Supporting Breastfeeding and Lactation Equity in Manitoba through Community-Integrated Education and Care Using Culturally Safe and Gender-Affirming Care.

This research focuses on addressing the gaps in access to breastfeeding support across Manitoba, particularly for First Nations families, 2SLGBTQI parents and other underrepresented groups.

Shen’s project, which also involves a support network, will include culturally respectful referral processes, a province-wide course on infant feeding and expanded peer support programs, like the Winnipeg-based Milk Mentors.

“By building a culturally competent and gender-inclusive network, we want to make sure that parents not only have access to the supports they need – especially in remote or underserved areas – but that the services are appropriate and affirming,” said Shen. “This is essential for the health of families throughout Manitoba.”

The funding for 10 UM research projects was awarded through the CIHR’s Project Grant Program, which is designed to support ideas with the greatest potential to advance health research, health-related fundamental or applied knowledge, health systems, health care or health outcomes.   

“Congratulations to the individuals from the Rady Faculty that secured funding for their important research,” said Dr. Mario Pinto, UM vice-president (research and international). “I’m thrilled to see that three of the teams were ranked No. 1 by their respective peer review committees. This demonstrates the leading-edge health research being conducted at UM.”

Dr. Peter Nickerson, dean of the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, said the projects also reflect the diversity of health research taking place at UM.

“The studies are led by scientists from many different fields – from community health sciences to oral biology to pharmacology and therapeutics. This funding will help our researchers carry out their projects which will inevitably have an impact on the health of Manitobans, Canadians and people around the world,” Nickerson said.  

One of the UM grant recipients is Dr. Soheila Karimi, professor of physiology and pathophysiology, Max Rady College of Medicine, and founding director of the Manitoba Multiple Sclerosis Research Centre. She and her team received $1,143,675 over five years to study what could one day be a new treatment for progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

“MS happens when the body’s immune system attacks and damages myelin, a protective layer around nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord. My research group has identified that Neuregulin-1, which is an important protein for proper function of the brain and spinal cord, is depleted in MS lesions. We have strong evidence that Neuregulin-1 holds promise as a potential treatment to promote myelin repair in progressive MS when repair fails, resulting in increased neurological impairments,” said Karimi, who is also a researcher with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM).

Karimi’s project will evaluate Neuregulin-1 as a future treatment to prevent the progression of MS and support tissue repair. A new treatment is much needed, Karimi said, because Canada is home to the world’s highest prevalence of MS and current medications are minimally effective for the progressive phase of the disease.

“We are really hoping that this research will set the groundwork for conclusive findings which would justify going to clinical trials, especially for progressive MS, because there is a critical treatment gap,” Karimi said.

Learn about the other UM projects funded through the latest round of CIHR’s Project Grant Program. More information about the research teams and the work they’ll be doing is available here.

Dr. Tracie Afifi, professor of community health sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine; Canada Research Chair in childhood adversity and resilience; researcher, CHRIM

Grant: $100,000 (one year)

Afifi will focus on updating and expanding her 10-year-old study related to child maltreatment across Canada. The team will update national and provincial prevalence of child abuse statistics and aim to understand the experiences of child abuse among those with different gender and sexual identities and how this impacts mental health and substance use outcome across age groups.

Dr. Heather Armstrong, assistant professor of internal medicine, Max Rady College of Medicine; Canada Research Chair in integrative bioscience; researcher, CHRIM

Grant: $814,725 (five years)

Armstrong’s team will study the reasons why some dietary fibres are not well tolerated in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). She hopes these findings support development of personalized dietary fibre guidelines for IBD patients, based on the individual’s gut and microbiome health to ensure only safe fibres are consumed, therefore promoting improved microbe and gut health.

Dr. Prashen Chelikani, professor of oral biology, Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry

Grant: $1,319,625 (five years)

Chelikani and the team will work to understand why some dental fungi are associated with tooth decay in preschool children and the local environmental factors that might influence them. This research on the dental mycobiome associated with severe tooth decay will assist with the development of new tooth decay prevention strategies for young Indigenous children.   

Dr. Keith Fowke, department head and professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases, Max Rady College of Medicine

Grant: $956,250 (five years)

Fowke will partner with organizations and community members in Nairobi, Kenya, to better understand the immune system among women who clear human papilloma virus (HPV) infection. The project aims to identify the immune cells that are important in the natural clearance of HPV with the goal of identifying these HPV clearance associated immune factors that are important for a therapeutic HPV vaccine to mimic.

Dr. Nathan Nickel, associate professor of community health sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine; director and senior research scientist, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy; researcher, CHRIM

Grant: $577,574 (three years)

In partnership with the Manitoba Métis Federation, Nickel and his team’s study will shed light on whether a Manitoba Health campaign that promoted the importance of childhood vaccinations improved childhood vaccination among Métis families. The study’s findings will support the development of strategies aimed at keeping childhood vaccination rates high in Manitoba as well as nation-specific strategies for Red River Métis citizens.

Dr. Christopher Pascoe, assistant professor of physiology and pathophysiology, Max Rady College of Medicine; researcher, CHRIM

Grant: $784,125 (five years)

Pascoe seeks to better understand why exposure to diabetes during pregnancy makes airways twitchier in asthma. The team will learn whether reducing blood glucose levels during pregnancy is an effective way to prevent changes from occurring and this information may allow them the ability to stop asthma in children exposed to diabetes from developing before it’s a problem that requires treatment.

Dr. Joel Pearson, assistant professor of pharmacology and therapeutics, Max Rady College of Medicine; researcher, Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute, CancerCare Manitoba

Grant: $983,025 (five years)

Pearson will lead a study aimed at understanding the underlying causes of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and how non-small cell lung cancer can change to SCLC. This research will help them identify new and improved treatments for SCLC so patients living with this cancer will have longer lives and better outcomes.

Dr. Souradet Shaw, assistant professor of community health sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine; Canada Research Chair in program science and global public health

Grant: $883,576 (four years)

Shaw’s study seeks to develop a deeper understanding of trends, determinants and responses to sexually transmitted and bloodborne infections (STBBI) in Manitoba over a 30-year period. Collaborations between community, public health and academics will be at the forefront of this project, with the goal of co-learning and co-designing interventions to ensure no one is left behind while addressing current and future STBBI outbreaks.

Dr. Roberta Woodgate, distinguished professor of nursing, College of Nursing; Canada Research Chair in child and family engagement in health research and healthcare; researcher, CHRIM

Grant: $768,824 (four years)

Woodgate will lead a study to gather evidence to inform the co-design of policies and research priorities meant to enhance the health and well-being of young people who care for family members or other loved ones. Young carers will co-design the policy recommendations and research priorities by gathering evidence grounded in their experiences and providing them with a leadership role in the process.

It revealed that Manitobans who drink to excess are much heavier users of the health-care system and have much more contact with social services and the justice system than those who don’t.

The study attained several global firsts, including being the first to look back in time and track individuals with alcohol addictions from five years before their diagnosis to as long as 20 years after it.

Nickel and his colleagues at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP), a research unit within UM’s Max Rady College of Medicine, were able to shed new light on people with these disorders because of the extraordinary breadth, depth and linkability of the data stored in the Manitoba Population Research Data Repository at MCHP.

In 2022, Nickel stepped into a new role as the director of MCHP. He sees vast potential for the centre’s team of more than 60 researchers, data analysts and other staff to keep pushing the boundaries of this kind of research.

“We’re doing groundbreaking work,” says Nickel, associate professor of community health sciences. “This is a really special place.”

MCHP was founded in 1991. The repository, curated and maintained by the centre on behalf of the province, is the richest data mine in Canada – in fact, one of the richest in the world – for population-based research.

Data is collected from the health-care, education, social service and justice systems every time a Manitoban comes into contact with these systems. Although the data is de-identified (anonymous), numeric codes allow each individual to be tracked across sectors and over time.

“MCHP is a leader on many fronts of data science,” Nickel says. “We have data dating back to the 1970s. We have the capacity to track the health of three, and in some cases four, generations of Manitoba families. We’re starting to use artificial intelligence to analyze data.

“We also have world-class expertise in data quality and data curation. We’re recruiting for a Canada Research Chair to take our data curation to the next level.”

Born and raised in southern California, Nickel earned his PhD in maternal and child health policy at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina. His goal was to generate research evidence that would inform public policy and lead to improved health outcomes, not sit on a shelf.

At a conference, he met the late Patricia Martens [B.Sc./72, Cert. Ed./73, M.Sc./94, PhD/99], who was the director of MCHP from 2005 to 2014. She told him that the Manitoba government regularly commissioned MCHP to do studies that went into the hands of policy-makers. In 2012, Nickel arrived at UM for postdoctoral work.

“The quality of the data, alongside that unique relationship with government, made it an irresistible opportunity,” he says.

By linking data sets, Nickel notes, researchers can generate findings that tell striking stories.

In 2019, an MCHP study that linked health status to postal codes showed that people living in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas South neighbourhood had an average life expectancy 18 years shorter than people in the nearby Inkster West neighbourhood.

“These drastic differences point to the fact that we must do better as a society to close these gaps,” says Nickel. “That’s the power of the data.”

MCHP has traditionally been funded by Manitoba Health to complete five major studies – conducted at arm’s length from government – per year. Recently, the centre and two partners have been piloting a new process: a quarterly intake of studies for government that may vary in size and scope.

The partner organizations are the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, jointly operated by UM and Shared Health, and the Manitoba arm of Supporting Older Adult Healthcare Reform Through Research, a research program focused on nursing homes.

“We’re now providing a single portal where the health-care system can access all three organizations,” Nickel says. “The intent is to foster more collaboration and be more responsive to emerging needs for research.”

Nickel’s vision for MCHP includes lending more expertise to researchers beyond Manitoba and Canada. The centre can support UM’s Institute for Global Public Health, for example, in analyzing health data in countries such as Kenya. MCHP researcher Malcolm Doupe [BPE/89, M.Sc./94, PhD/05] is collaborating with scientists in Norway on a project examining elder care.

A significant area of untapped potential, Nickel says, is for the repository data to be used by more non-health researchers, such as social scientists. Marni Brownell [PhD/91], associate director of research at MCHP, received a grant to explore how the data can be leveraged by community organizations and non-health government departments.

Other priorities at the centre are to identify and address systemic biases in data research and to contribute to the area of data sovereignty, recognizing, for example, that Indigenous communities have the right to governance over data about them.

Having worked for more than a decade at MCHP, Nickel has been gratified to see the unit’s findings spur change, including the introduction of new treatments, programs and services.

The fact that MCHP documents the lived experience of Manitobans is crucial to informing provincial policy, Nickel says.

“When we’re sitting around the table over at the Legislature, talking about trends like wait times at emergency departments, we’re not pulling information from Ontario or British Columbia. We’re saying, ‘This is here in Manitoba.’ It carries a lot more weight for decision-making.”

The Steacie Prize is awarded by the trustees of the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fund, a private foundation dedicated to the advancement of science and engineering in Canada. The prize is awarded annually to a young scientist or engineer who has made notable contributions to research in Canada.

Dr. Meghan Azad.

Azad is the third UM recipient of the Steacie Prize and the first since 1971, 52 years ago. She is the first woman from UM to ever be selected for this esteemed award since it was created in 1964.

“I am honoured to receive this award and highlight the importance of research about early nutrition and the developmental origins of health and disease,” said Meghan Azad. “Although these types of awards are given to an individual, I believe they are the result of a team science approach. I would like to thank the many colleagues, mentors, and trainees I have had the honour of working with for their support and contributions to our research.”

Azad is a globally recognized leader in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, a concept that emphasizes the long-term impact of early life experiences. She is uniquely investigating how breast milk and breastfeeding influences later health and disease in children. Her groundbreaking work continues to uncover the role of breast milk in the infant microbiome, with the goal of preventing chronic disease and promoting healthy growth in early development.

Azad is a research scientist with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba and holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Chronic Disease. Her innovative research has earned funding nationally and internationally from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has published 144 peer-reviewed articles, which have been cited more than 11,000 times.

Azad’s work has already been recognized with several awards to date. In 2020, Azad was selected for the Ken Hughes Young Investigator Award in Medical Research, the Canadian Society for Clinical Investigation Joe Doupe Young Investigator Award, and the International Milk Genomics Consortium Outstanding Mid-Career Investigator Award. She has also named among Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women (2020), and Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 (2021).

Dr. Azad being awarded the Steacie Prize by Committee selection member Dr. Digvir Jayas.

On March 28, colleagues from across the university community gathered to celebrate her accomplishment at an award ceremony presented by Steacie Prize selection panel representative Dr. Digvir Jayas.

“This Steacie Prize is an important recognition of the successes of Dr. Azad and her world-leading research in the developmental origins of health and disease and a testament to the extraordinary research talent here at UM,” said Dr. Mario Pinto, UM Vice-President (Research and International). “We are deeply honoured that she has chosen the University of Manitoba as her home and welcome the opportunity to celebrate her incredible achievements together. Her work serves as a wonderful example of discovery research, as well as knowledge mobilization and translation for societal and economic impact, which will continue to be felt both at home and around the world for generations to come.”

Azad’s goal is to prevent chronic disease and promote healthy growth during critical periods of early development. To achieve this, she co-founded the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC) with Dr. Nathan Nickel. MILC is the first facility dedicated to the interdisciplinary research of breast milk and breastfeeding in the world.

Leveraging the success of MILC, Azad has extended the scope of the organization globally, establishing the International Milk Composition Consortium (IMiC). IMiC facilitates collaboration between four research groups studying maternal nutrition and infant growth in Tanzania, Pakistan, Burkina Faso and Canada.

“I’m fueled by the excitement of doing cutting-edge science, and the drive to translate discoveries to make a meaningful impact on child and maternal health globally,” said Meghan Azad. “It’s gratifying to see our research and advocacy around breastfeeding and breast milk recognized as an important field on the national stage. This work involves many colleagues, trainees and research participants. I am grateful to them all and excited about the new projects we have in the pipeline together.”

Azad and collaborators recently launched the International Perinatal Outcomes in the Pandemic (iPOP) Study, to study the impact of pandemic lockdowns on preterm birth rates. iPOP represents the work of more than 100 researchers spanning 42 countries; the results were recently published in Nature Human Behaviour. She is also the co-director of the multidisciplinary THRiVE Discovery Lab, together with Natalie Rodriguez, and is deputy director of the CHILD Cohort Study which follows 10,000 participants across some 3,500 households to learn how early experiences shape lifelong health.

In addition to her many active research projects, Azad serves on the joint US/Canada Human Milk Composition Initiative. She is also a member of the Executive Council of the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation, where she co-developed the Trainee Expansion Program, a global exchange initiative for research trainees.

From 2013 to 2018, there was a nearly sevenfold increase in the number of Manitobans who had an initial contact with the health system related to methamphetamine (meth) use, researchers at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences found.

In Winnipeg, the number of emergency-department visits involving meth use rose more than sevenfold (from 134 to 1,001 visits) between 2013 and 2018.

Meth, a highly addictive stimulant, can cause severe health complications, including heart attack, stroke, seizure and death. Users may experience psychosis that causes hallucinations, delusions or paranoia.

The MCHP study of health data aimed to better understand patterns of meth use in the province. It revealed that people who consume the illicit drug are much heavier users of the health system than the average Manitoban.

In Winnipeg, in the year following someone’s first documented use of the drug, they went to a hospital emergency room an average of six times, compared to only one visit every three years by other Manitobans. In the same period, people who used meth were about five times more likely to be hospitalized than other Manitobans.

Those who used the drug also had significantly more doctor visits and more contacts with paramedics. 

“Our findings highlight the rapidly increasing need for services among Manitobans who use this drug,” said the study’s co-leader, Dr. Nathan Nickel, associate professor of community health sciences.

“We’ve quantified that meth plays a role in an escalating number of 911 calls and visits to emergency rooms. Recent studies have also documented a dramatic increase in meth-related trips to Winnipeg’s mental health crisis response centre and rising demand for addiction treatment programs.

“By learning more about who uses the drug, we can help the system respond to this population’s health challenges and develop strategies to reduce and prevent meth use.”      

To conduct the study, the researchers analyzed de-identified (anonymous) health data stored in a repository at MCHP. They assembled a cohort of about 4,800 Manitoba adults who had used the drug, then traced their interactions with the health system.

“Because we could only track people whose meth use was documented through health-care encounters, we know the actual number of Manitobans using the drug is higher,” Nickel said.

Those who used meth were most likely to be aged 18 to 34. They were about equally split between men and women. More than half lived in low-income neighbourhoods.

In Winnipeg, data from the Fire Paramedic Service showed that in 2013, paramedics were mostly being called to downtown areas for meth-related emergencies. Over the next five years, meth-related paramedic services spread to many other areas of the city. “You can see by the maps in the study that this is not just an inner-city health issue,” Nickel said.

Another key finding, the researchers said, is that people who use meth are far more likely to have one or more mental disorders than other Manitobans. Their rate of being diagnosed with a mood or anxiety disorder, for example, was three times higher than among other Manitobans.

“Although we don’t know from the data whether their meth use preceded their mental disorder or vice versa, our findings indicate that caring for people who use meth is complex because their challenges are often multi-layered,” said Dr. Mariette Chartier, assistant professor of community health sciences and co-leader of the study.   

“Studies have shown that people’s life circumstances can predispose them to turn to meth as a way of coping. As Manitoba’s health-care planners work to support people who use meth – and relieve the growing burden on front-line services that we’ve documented – it’s critical to address underlying factors that influence both mental health and substance use, such as poverty, insecure housing, racism and trauma.”

The researchers will continue to examine meth use in a project funded by Health Canada. They plan to document the lived experiences of Manitobans who use meth and study their health outcomes.

The full study is available online.

The Honourable Patty Hajdu, Canada’s Minister of Health, announced the funding from the Government of Canada, through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), along with provincial partners, that invests more than $109 million over one year in COVID-19 research.

“I congratulate our successful investigators and their partners and collaborators for their essential research to address this global health emergency,” said Dr. Digvir Jayas, Vice-President (Research and International) and Distinguished Professor at UM.

The six UM researchers who are having their projects supported through CIHR and Research Manitoba include five located at the Max Rady College of Medicine and one at the Faculty of Arts.

Faculty of Arts:

Lori Wilkinson (Sociology and Criminology), CIHR – $671,332

Lori Wilkinson

The COVID-19 virus preys on people in vulnerable situations such as overcrowded housing and work stations, these conditions are frequent among racialized persons, Indigenous persons and newcomers, Wilkinson’s project will seeks answers to questions impacting populations of Indigenous, racialized persons and newcomers, in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The project will seek answers to two central questions: How have COVID-19 related government imposed regulations differentially influenced the mental health and well-being of Indigenous peoples, racialized persons and immigrants? And, to what extent have socioeconomic inequalities faced by Indigenous peoples, racialized persons and immigrants influenced their experience of COVID-19 and its related social and economic restrictions?

Max Rady College of Medicine:

Meghan Azad (Pediatrics & Child Health/Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba), Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Chronic Disease, CIHR awarded $1,639,795; Research Manitoba awarded $100,000

Meghan Azad.

Social distancing policies and school and business closures have helped slow the spread of COVID-19, but we don’t know how they will affect mental health and wellbeing (especially in children) in the long term. We also don’t know why some people infected with the novel coronavirus get very sick and others do not, and we don’t know the true rate of infection in the population. These are urgent questions that must be answered quickly to control outbreaks and minimize the unintended consequences of pandemic management policies.  Azad and her team will study the direct effects of coronavirus infection and the indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the existing CHILD Cohort Study.

Kevin Coombs (Medical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases/Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba), CIHR awarded $790,162

Kevin Coombs

All strategies of rapidly developing tools to mitigate this catastrophic SARS-CoV-2 pandemic are fundamentally dependent on identifying and controlling those proteins that execute the cellular mechanisms critical for the virus to infect and replicate in host cells. Coombs will lead a multi-institutional consortium using a powerful novel tool, called SOMAscan, and next-generation sequencing, to rapidly determine how COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus) – and a variety of other coronaviruses – affect large numbers of genes and proteins in different human lung cells, the normal target of the COVID-19 virus.

Josée Lavoie (Community Health Sciences/Indigenous Institute of Health and Healing Ongomiizwin – Research), Leona Star and Wanda Phillips-Beck, First Nations Health and Social Secretariat of Manitoba, CIHR awarded $475,836

Josée Lavoie

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of modeling in estimating the course of the infection over time, the potential impact of public health measures and the resources required to meet response need. Lavoie—working in full partnership with the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat of Manitoba (FNHSSM)—a seasoned team of First Nations organization-based and university-based researchers with a long history of collaborating, will develop a FNHSSM-based agile platform, for modeling community pandemics. Models will be developed with data from community profiles, evidence of transmission and severity derived from the literature and approaches co-created through knowledge exchange.  This unique project will strengthen an existing platform and be made scalable to other Indigenous contexts.

Nathan Nickel (Community Health Sciences/Manitoba Centre for Health Policy/Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba), Leona Star, Wanda Phillips-Beck, Francis Chartrand, Julianne Sanguins, Rachel Dutton, Wayne Clark, CIHR – $317,917

Nathan Nickel

Some groups of Canadians are likely to be harder hit by the COVID-19 pandemic than others. First Nations, Métis and Inuit Canadians are examples of these. These groups have high rates of chronic illnesses (like heart disease and lung disease) that put them at high risk for poor COVID-19 outcomes. Nickel is undertaking this project in partnership with the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat, the Manitoba Metis Federation and the Manitoba Inuit Association. It will provide data on who is being tested for COVID-19, using the province of Manitoba as a sample for the rest of Canada. This information can then be used to direct and scale-up the public health response to COVID-19 where it is most needed.

Ryan Zarychanski (Internal Medicine/Research Institute of Oncology and Hematology), CIHR – $3,573,336

Ryan Zarychanski

COVID-19 is associated with inflammation and an unusually high risk of blood clots. Small studies have suggested that anticoagulant (blood thinning) medications reduce inflammation and prevent blood clots from forming and may improve the health and survival of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. The goal of this randomized trial is to establish whether anticoagulants called heparins can improve outcomes in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. This international trial will enroll patients from Canada, the U.S., Brazil and Mexico. Zarychanski is also a co-principal investigator with Dr. Alexis Turgeon (Université Laval) on another CIHR COVID-19 Rapid Response grant ($2.1 million) to further investigate heparin anticoagulation in patients who are critically ill.

The study by the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) in the University of Manitoba’s Rady Faculty of Health Sciences focused on a cohort of Manitobans who were born in 1994.

It found that more than one-third of children who spent any time in the care of Child and Family Services (CFS) were charged with at least one crime in their youth (between ages 12 and 17).

By the age of 21, nearly half of those who had spent any time in care had been charged with a criminal offence.

In fact, a 21-year-old who had spent any time in care was more likely to have been charged with a crime than to have completed high school.

“We found a very strong association between being taken into CFS care and becoming involved in the youth criminal justice system,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Marni Brownell, professor of community health sciences and senior research scientist/associate director of research at MCHP.

“This does not prove that being in care causes justice system involvement. But it quantifies the substantial overlap between the two systems, which Indigenous leaders have been talking about for decades.”

Dr. Lorna Turnbull, professor and former dean of the UM Faculty of Law, and Dr. Nathan Nickel, associate professor of community health sciences, were co-principal investigators for the project.

The study showed that Indigenous children and youth are greatly over-represented in both the child welfare and youth criminal justice systems. First Nation youth are many times more likely to be involved in both systems than other youth in the province.  

Manitoba has the highest rate of children in care of any Canadian province. It also has the highest rate of youth incarceration. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has called on governments to address the over-representation of Indigenous children in these systems.

Brownell’s team focused on more than 18,000 children who were born in 1994. The researchers conducted the study by analyzing de-identified (anonymous) child welfare and justice system data stored in a repository at MCHP.

The data showed that the more times a child was taken into care, the higher his or her risk of being charged with a crime later on. A child placed in a group home was more likely to be charged with a crime as a youth than a child placed with foster parents.

“Children in care with mental disorders were also more likely to be charged with a crime, which could suggest that these interactions with the justice system point to unaddressed mental health issues,” Brownell said.

Almost half of the charges laid against youth in care from the 1994 cohort were for breaches such as drinking alcohol or staying out past curfew while under certain restrictions, such as probation – teenage activities that are not usually considered criminal.   

“Part of the problem is that being criminally charged for these administrative offences can send CFS kids into a downward spiral of justice system involvement,” Brownell said.

The study team also looked at other birth cohorts to detect trends. Over time, the two-system overlap worsened: children who had been in care made up an increasing proportion of youth charged with a crime, from 28 per cent in the 1988 cohort to 45 per cent in the 1998 cohort.

The disproportionate involvement of First Nation youth also increased. First Nation youth went from making up 41 per cent of all Manitoba youth with criminal charges in the 1988 cohort to 54 per cent in the 1998 cohort.

The study includes input from First Nation youth. One is quoted as saying, “Governments need to be more aware of preventions, rather than just punishments.”  

The researchers agree. Their recommendations include:

• Increase funding, supports and services to prevent children from being removed from their families and placed in care.
• Recognize that Indigenous children are greatly over-represented in these systems because of factors that include historical and ongoing colonial policies, systemic racism, chronic underfunding of services to Indigenous communities, and social determinants such as poverty, inadequate housing, and food and water insecurity.
• Acknowledge the resilience of Indigenous people and empower them to deliver their own services, in line with their own values and policies.
• Continue to monitor and report on the two-system overlap and other key statistics related to child welfare and youth criminal justice.

Read the full study here.

Uma Yakandawala

Last fall, Yakandawala joined the College of Pharmacy master’s program to begin her research studying medications in breast milk and has recently received the 2020 Canada Graduate Scholarships – Masters (CGS M) award which will support her in her studies. The value of the award is $17,500 for 12 months.

“Through communicating with people at community engagement events, I’ve found that there’s a limited amount of knowledge that they have on making a decision whether or not to take a medication and how much medication to take,” says Yakandawala.

She will be working at the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC), led by Dr. Meghan Azad, Dr. Nathan Nickel, and Dr. Lauren Kelly. All three are assistant professors in the departments of pediatrics and child health and community health sciences and research scientists at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba. Nickel is an associate director at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.

She will be supervised by Kelly and Dr. Christine Leong, assistant professor, College of Pharmacy.

MILC is a research centre building a novel biorepository to study breast milk linked to administrative data.

“Manitoba has a unique opportunity to lead medication in breast milk research in Canada with the development of MILC,” says Yakandawala.

There are two components to Yakandawala’s project. The first part will be a systematic review to understand the collection methods and analytical techniques used to study medications in breast milk. This will help to inform the development of analytical techniques in order to quantify levels of medications excreted in breast milk.

The second part is a scoping review and a questionnaire. This will help researchers to understand the preference factors of mothers that contribute to their decisions to take medications during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Yakandawala started down this research path last summer while doing an undergraduate research award project with Leong. She decided to continue studying the topic.

“I’m especially interested in the knowledge translation piece, how we’re able to translate the research we do in the lab to the community,” she says.

The community engagement aspect is something Yakandawala enjoys most about the project, which allows her to go out and speak with people about the subject face-to-face.

“We hold a lot of community engagement events to understand what people know about medication in breast milk and how they want to be involved in the research. There’s a holistic approach to our research which I really love,” she says.

Yakandawala hopes her study will one day help people who are pregnant and breastfeeding make more informed decisions about medications.

“There’s isn’t a lot of existing research in the literature,” she says. “It’s important to ensure that future research will study patient outcomes and what’s important to mothers and pregnant people when it comes to medications and breast milk. This study will hopefully lead to the development of a decision aid that may be used in clinical practice.”

Yakandawala says she was excited to find out the news that she received the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s (CGS M) award, which aims to help develop research skills and assist in the training of highly qualified personnel by supporting students who demonstrate a high standard of achievement in early graduate studies.

“I was honoured and appreciative to be one of the students at UM that got chosen to receive this scholarship,” she says.

The CGS M program provides financial support for to up to 3,000 graduate students annually in all disciplines. It is administered jointly by Canada’s three federal agencies: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. More info: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/students-etudiants/pg-cs/cgsm-bescm_eng.asp

This investment will support 251 researchers leading 186 projects at 43 universities across Canada. JELF aims to help universities attract and retain top talent from around the globe by providing researchers with the highly specialized infrastructure they require to be leaders in their field.

“Since 1997, the Canada Foundation for Innovation has been ensuring Canadian researchers have the tools they need to push the frontiers of knowledge in all disciplines,” the minister said. “The stable, long-term funding we are celebrating today will help Canada continue to be an international destination for research and innovation.”

As part of this funding, the University of Manitoba is receiving more than $1.1 million in support of seven projects in areas such as disease, food processing and supercomputers. Dr. Janilyn Arsenio, for example, will use the funding to help with her research in developing new strategies for vaccine design and in improving the treatment of infections, cancer and autoimmune diseases.

“I congratulate these researchers on their exceptional work being recognized today with this new investment. The advancements they make will contribute to health and economic well-being in Manitoba and beyond,” says Digvir Jayas, Vice-President (Research and International) and Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba

The U of M recipients are:

Janilyn Arsenio

Janilyn Arsenio

Canada Research Chair in Systems Biology of Chronic Inflammation, Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, is receiving $156,834 for project titled: Single-cell transcriptomics analysis of the immune system during infection and chronic inflammation.

An effective immune system provides protection against infection and prevents immune dysregulation. Dysregulation can lead to conditions of chronic inflammation. This includes heightened immune responses in autoimmune diseases and transplant rejections, or to a loss of immune function (exhaustion) in chronic infections and cancer. This research aims to understand how single T cells become functional immune regulators. Single-cell transcriptomics will be used to define the molecular programs which form functional versus dysfunctional T cells during infection and conditions of chronic inflammation. Information from this research will be used to develop novel vaccines and immunotherapies to prevent and treat infectious and non-infectious diseases. Advancing single-cell systems based research in biomedicine to be transformative into the development of next generation therapeutic strategies to treat diseases will positively impact the economic, health, and training sectors in Canada.

Meghan Azad

Meghan Azad and Nathan Nickel

Azad is Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Chronic Disease, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics and Child Health, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences and Scientist with Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, is receiving $165,464 for project titled: Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC): a provincial infant feeding database and human milk biorepository.

Nickel is assistant professor, community health sciences; Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

Nathan Nickel

Funds will be used to establish a new one-of-a-kind research centre: the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC). MILC will combine a provincial infant feeding database and a human milk biorepository that will be linked with a wealth of health and social services data at the Manitoba Population Research Data Repository.

MILC will provide unrivaled opportunities to conduct interdisciplinary research on the impact of policies on breastfeeding, the biology of human milk, and the influence of social factors on breastfeeding biology and behaviours.

Filiz Koksel

Assistant Professor, Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, is receiving $160,000 for project titled: Tailoring quality during processing of protein rich plant-based food materials.

Filiz Koksel

The proposed innovative research program aims to develop techniques to manufacture high quality plant protein-rich foods under a wide range of process conditions and to

formulate nutritionally dense and palatable foods with appealing, novel structures. Through value added processing of Canadian cereals and pulses into products such as meat extenders, meat analogs and protein-rich snacks, the findings of this program will increase the availability of healthy alternatives to animal-based foods. Trainees involved in this research will receive exceptional interdisciplinary training in food engineering and materials science, so they are skilled to non-destructively characterize and assess the structure and texture of foods and then be able to control food quality in real-time during processing.

Lyle McKinnon

Lyle McKinnon

Assistant Professor, Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease with a cross-appointment in Community Health Sciences, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences is receiving $155,942 for project entitled: Enhancing capacity for cellular phenotyping for HIV prevention and cure research.

Understanding the underlying biology of virus entry at a mucosal level is believed to be key to designing better HIV prevention. This research will focus on defining the cellular determinants of HIV transmission and pathogenesis, with the goal of improving HIV prevention options that are available in the clinic. This research will lead to the training of personnel at multiple levels, from undergraduate students to principle investigators, including Canada’s future leaders in HIV prevention research. The benefits to Canadians and world-wide extend beyond fighting HIV, by increasing knowledge of immunology that is “taught by viruses” — advances in HIV have frequently provided insight into the host immune system that the virus attacks, shedding light on other medical conditions with an immunological basis.

Gerd Prehna

Gerd Prehna

Assistant Professor, Microbiology, Faculty of Science is receiving $159, 028 for project titled: High-yield Protein Production Suite for Structural Biology.

Gram-negative bacteria have evolved a macromolecular machine termed the type VI secretion system (T6SS) to communicate directly with each other, competing micro-organisms, and with eukaryotic hosts. The human gut flora use the T6SS to maintain a mutualistic relationship with their host, whereas pathogens such as Salmonella use it as a weapon. At the molecular level the T6SS is adaptable and modular to allow bacteria to perform numerous functions. As Salmonella species have multiple divergent T6SS adapted for specific hosts (human, chicken, reptile), the research program will investigate T6SS versatility in detail at the molecular level. A detailed molecular understanding of the Salmonella T6SS will not only reveal targets for the development of new antibiotics, but given its versatility further research could allow it to be developed into a tunable drug delivery system.

Robert Stamps

Robert Stamps

Professor and Head, Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science is receiving $114,046 for project titled: Desktop Supercomputers for the Design of Advanced Functional Materials.

This research will create a resource essential for the development of advanced functional materials. The focus will be on materials with potential to enable new opportunities for next generation energy efficient information and communication technologies, nanoscale sensing devices for biomedical applications, and novel quantum technologies. This research will provide needed computational tools for the design of next generation multifunctional and smart materials whose unique electric and magnetic properties do not exist in the current stockpile of material options. Useful models for the design and exploitation of these materials require a multi-scale modelling approach that poses enormous computational challenges. These challenges can be addressed with computational resources recently available in low-cost desktop platforms and moderate sized clusters made possible with accelerations using the multiple cores of high end graphics cards.

Marcelo Urquia

Marcelo Urquia and Alyson Mahar

Assistant Professors, Community Health Sciences and Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences is receiving $240,000 for the project titled: Social Determinants of Health Digital Library.

To effectively address the social determinants of health there is a need for richer information across sectors (combining information from health, education, social services, and the justice systems), a greater focus on families, and development of new analytic tools to optimize the use of the available data.

Alyson Mahar

Urquia and Mahar will create a laboratory to study these important contributors to health and well-being, bringing together new and existing data at the University of Manitoba with key stakeholders to support Canadians who face challenges to achieving optimal health. Urquia will focus on integration to Canadian society, gender equity initiatives, and navigating the health system for Canadian immigrant families working to support the development of solutions to issues affecting their well-being. Mahar will help strengthen Canadian Armed Forces families by studying the short and long-term effects of military service, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorders, following soldiers’ transition to civilian life. Her program will also work to ensure all Canadians have equal opportunity to benefit from advances in cancer treatment, especially marginalized populations.

Dr. Nathan Nickel, assistant professor, community health sciences and a research scientist at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, is the methodologist for a study that closed the gap on breastfeeding rates between African American and white families, and Hispanic and white families.

Between 2014 and 2017, 33 hospitals located in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Texas took part in the Communities and Hospitals Advancing Maternity Practices (CHAMPS) program out of Boston Medical Center’s Center for Health Equity, Education and Research.

“I was shocked that we reduced inequities,” Nickel said. “I really was, because we haven’t seen that [in the past].”

Over three years, breastfeeding initiation at the participating hospitals rose from 66 per cent to 75 per cent, and among African Americans, it rose from 43 per cent to 63 per cent. The gap between white and black breastfeeding rates decreased by 9.6 per cent.

 “In the South, the history of slavery and racism really, really impacts the quality of care that black families receive from the hospitals and from the health-care providers,” Nickel said.

When the study began, researchers saw significant inequities in how black families were treated by hospital staff compared to white families, he said. African American infants were not given skin-to-skin contact with their mothers after birth, and infants were separated and placed in nurseries, unlike white newborns. The study found that African American mothers wanted to breastfeed, but the hospitals’ practices became barriers to breastfeeding.

Nickel said hospital staff had preconceived ideas that black and Hispanic mothers didn’t want to breastfeed. A significant component of the project was helping hospital staff overcome these ideas about whether African American and Hispanic families wanted to breastfeed.

Another component of the study was introducing the World Health Organization and UNICEF’s Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative and its 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, which recommends immediate skin-to-skin contact after birth, and keeping mothers and babies together in the same room. The 10 Steps are about removing barriers to breastfeeding for moms that want to breastfeed, and providing optimum care, he said.

Nickel would like to see changes in Canada as well based on the study’s results.

“We need to decolonize the health-care system,” he said. “The States has its horrible legacy of slavery, as well as how it treated First Nations people. In Canada, we have the history of institutional racism and historical trauma which impact health and well-being, including breastfeeding.”

Nickel said the language and rhetoric is similar in Canada and can turn to blaming families rather than looking at underlying social and systemic determinants of health.

“Many of the steps that are part of Baby Friendly are just returning to traditional practices for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. I think it can be part of decolonizing our health-care system,” he said. “The lessons we learned in the States may help improve maternity care here in Canada.”