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 designation recognizes extraordinary, internationally-recognized, scholarly or creative achievement and an exemplary teaching record.

The newest Distinguished Professors are Dr. Charles Bernstein [MD/85] in internal medicine and Bingham Chair in Gastroenterology Research, Dr. Diana Brydon in English, film and theater and Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies, and Dr. Pat Martens [PhD/99] in community health sciences.

They were recognized at Spring Convocation 2014.

Dr. Patricia Martens, department of community health sciences

Dr. Patricia Martens

Dr. Martens is a Senior Scientists and former Director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, an internationally acclaimed research centre at the University of Manitoba that focuses on population-based health services, public health and population health research. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the International Lactation Consultants’ Association.

Dr. Martens has been involved in various national committees, including Governing Board of the Canadian Foundation for Health Innovation, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research Advisory Boards. She has received various research career awards, and in 2010 she was named the YM/YWCA Woman of Distinction for Health & Wellness. She has been invited to speak at over 400 conferences around the world, and has published over 300 articles, reports, book chapters and abstracts. Her research interests include studies on health status and healthcare use, inequities, mental health, child health, and breastfeeding.

Dr. Martens began and co-directs The Need To Know Team, a collaborative research group of university academics working with planners from Manitoba’s 5 Regional Health Authorities and the Manitoba Department of Health. This Team’s research impact on health policy and planning was recognized through receipt of the prestigious CIHR’s national KT Award for Regional Impact in 2005. In 2013, she received the R.D. Defries Award, which is the highest award of the Canadian Public Health Association. It is given for outstanding contributions in public health. Then, in 2014, she received the Justice Emmett Hall Laureat award for a lifetime of groundbreaking work that promotes the ideals articulated by Justice Emmett Hall: equity, fairness, justice and efficiency in Canada’s health system.

Dr. Charles Bernstein, department of internal medicine

Dr. Charles Bernstein

Dr. Bernstein is an internationally acclaimed expert in gastrointestinal and inflammatory bowel disease who has won numerous awards throughout his career, including the Rh Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship and Research in the Health Sciences (1999). He received the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada Research Scientist Award (2001-2005), which he again won the following year (2005-2011), and in 2007 his peers voted him into Best Doctors Canada. In 2008 he was elected to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and in 2012 he was elected into the Royal Society of Medicine Health Sciences Division.

Dr. Bernstein earned his Medical Degree from the University of Manitoba in 1985 and completed his postgraduate training in internal medicine at the University of Manitoba. He has held many appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles and at the University of Manitoba since 1991, the year he received his Gastroenterology Board Certification from the Royal College of Physician and Surgeons of Canada and successfully completed the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Gastroenterology Certifying Examination.

Dr. Bernstein is currently the Bingham Chair in Gastroenterology Research, the Section Head of Gastroenterology at the University of Manitoba, and Director of the University of Manitoba Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical and Research Centre, which he had led since 1994. This Centre has allowed for some of the most thorough population studies ever done in this field. One major project was the Manitoba IBD Cohort Study (a CIHR funded study), which followed approximately 350 patients for 10 years and is still ongoing, providing data describing predictors of outcomes: how IBD will evolve in certain scenarios and what determines disease outcomes. Other studies have examined the effects IBD has on bones, found links between IBD and asthma, and one study has recently homed in what could be a possible IBD-causing bacterium. His students, colleagues and collaborators throughout the world respect his vast expertise. He has published extensively in well-known specialty journals and has been an invited lecturer locally, nationally and internationally.

Dr. Diana Brydon, department of English, film and theatre

Dr. Diana Brydon

Dr. Brydon is a Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies and an internationally acclaimed literary critic known for her multifaceted and groundbreaking contributions to postcolonial literary and cultural studies.

Through her research at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies, which she directs, Dr. Brydon assesses and develops ways in which research into globalization and the analysis of cultural practices can contribute to furthering trans-cultural understanding and interdisciplinary collaboration to address some of the challenges posed by globalization. Many common sense views of globalization are not supported by the evidence. By drawing on humanities and social sciences methods and perspectives, Dr. Brydon examines globalization and what it means for Canadian culture and Canada’s place within a changing world system.

She has a strong record of bringing people together in collective projects that are shifting the terrain of knowledge production within interdisciplinary and transnational projects. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2008, she has published nine books, three special journal issues, 46 refereed articles, 38 book chapters, six chapters in refereed conference proceedings, and 53 book reviews. Her work has been translated into Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese.