Award winners were announced Jan. 15, with Dr. Tara Horrill, assistant professor at the College of Nursing, and, Dr. Joel Pearson, assistant professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the Max Rady College of Medicine, named among the 16 recipients.

The organization awarded $8.7 million in total across eight provinces.

Horrill received $600,000 for five years for her research to better understand the barriers to accessing timely treatment for socially disadvantaged people living with lung cancer. She is working with a team of researchers from across Canada, including from the University of Manitoba, CancerCare Manitoba, Queen’s University and the University of Victoria.

“Being able to access high-quality cancer treatment in a timely way increases people’s chances of survival. Yet, those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged or living in poverty have difficulty accessing treatment because they are often not referred to a cancer specialist after diagnosis, are unable to access cancer treatment on time or are offered lower-quality treatments,” Horrill said.

Horrill and her research team will listen to the experiences of people with cancer, talk to health-care providers, study medical records and look at strategies used elsewhere to improve access to cancer treatment for similar groups.

“People who are diagnosed with lung cancer often experience a lot of stigma related to their diagnosis because of the fact that smoking is one of the leading causes of lung cancer,” Horrill said. “And when you layer on the stigma that people experience when they are living in poverty, that could be a contributing factor to why we are seeing some of these disparities in treatment.”

She said there can also be challenges with how cancer treatment services are designed or delivered, or policies that are creating barriers for people.

“But we don’t really know, so that is the focus of this project, to examine the underlying reasons. We’re hoping to look at strategies that we could be implemented in Manitoba to address some of the barriers to accessing lung cancer treatment and to improve access to that treatment.”

Pearson, who is also a scientist with the Paul Albrechtsen Research Institute, CancerCare Manitoba, received $550,000 for five years for a study to better understand how lung cancer progresses, specifically small-cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Canada, and SCLC has the worst outcomes, with people with the disease surviving less than one year after diagnosis on average, Pearson said.

“There have been no advancements in the treatments of SCLC, and a big reason is the discovery about the disease has really lagged behind other cancers. We just don’t know enough about the underlying causes of it to develop new treatments,” he said.

Pearson is working with Rady researchers  Dr. Shantanu Banerji, Dr. Britt Drögemöller, Dr. David Dawe and Dr. Gefei Qing, along with patient-partner Sandra Swystun. The team is working to better understand how people develop SCLC, how it progresses and how to better treat people living with lung cancer.

The project will investigate why certain lung cancers mutate and form resistance to some of the currently available treatments.

“This could identify new and improved treatments for lung cancer so that people living with this devastating disease will have longer lives and better outcomes,” Pearson said.

Featuring presentations researchers in the early and middle stages of their professional research journey that will highlight important topics representing a wide range of disciplines and Faculties. Hosted by the Vice-President (Research and International) Office, each event will include presentations from five or more emerging experts as well as opportunities for networking and cross-departmental collaboration.

“This event is an exciting opportunity for networking among researchers working to establish new projects and programs at UM,” said Dr. Annemieke Farenhorst, Associate Vice-President (Research).  “Groundbreaking research is taking place every day in our community, and I hope that all researchers will join us to foster new collaborations between our labs and Faculties. I look forward to meeting you there!”

Register by January 24 to join the inaugural Emerging Researcher Spotlight Series:

Thursday February 1, 2024 from 2pm-4pm

Muli-Purpose Room, UMSU University Centre, Fort Garry Campus

Featuring presentations from:

• Lindsay Larios, Faculty of Social Work
• Tara Horrill, College of Nursing, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences
• Akinwumi Ogunrani, Faculty of Law
• Curt McCartney, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences
• Chi Liao, Asper School of Business
• Mercedes Garcia Holguera, Faculty of Architecture
• Kjell Anderson, Faculty of Law
• Asher Mendelson, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences

Future Emerging Researcher Spotlight Events will take place throughout winter and spring 2024:

Session 2, February 27, 2024, 2:00 – 4:00pm, Apotex Centre, room 050, Bannatyne Campus

Session 3, March 28, 2024, 9:00 – 11:00am, Marshall McLuhan Hall, UMSU University Centre, Fort Garry Campus

Session 4, April 23, 2024, 9:00 – 11:00am, Apotex Centre, room 050, Bannatyne Campus

Session 5, May 13, 2024, 9:00 – 11:00am, Muli-Purpose Room, UMSU University Centre, Fort Garry Campus

Session 6, June 17, 2024, 9:00 – 11:00am, Apotex Centre, room 050, Bannatyne Campus

Word cloud of presentation topics at the inaugural Emerging Researcher Spotlight Series, February 1, 2024.

There she saw first-hand the health inequities that people who are marginalized face when living with cancer.

“I saw people being diagnosed with advanced cancers that are easily detectable through screening and are generally amenable to curative treatment. We should not be seeing people at such late stages of their cancer journey,” she said.

Born and raised in Morden, Man., Horrill received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from UM in 2005. In 2014, she returned to the university to pursue a master’s degree, and then fast tracked into the College of Nursing’s PhD program. In 2021, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship funded by Michael Smith Health Research BC at the University of British Columbia, with a cross appointment at BC Cancer.

Horrill joined the College of Nursing faculty in September 2022.

“I’m looking forward to establishing collaborative relationships with other researchers at the College of Nursing and, eventually with others involved in the delivery of oncology care in Manitoba,” she said.

Horrill’s research is focused on equity-oriented health care, with a particular focus on systems-level changes to improve care for highly marginalized people living with cancer.

“People who experience significant health and social inequities are dying of preventable or treatable cancers because they cannot access the care and treatment they need,” she said.

“In a previous study, I found there is an increasing focus on health equity as a priority, but few meaningful actions are being taken, and these are often lacking a coordinated systems-level approach.”

Horrill is currently leading a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and health-care providers from the University of British Columbia, University of Victoria and BC Cancer, studying how to improve care for people who are highly marginalized and living with cancer.

Horrill said the eventual goal is to integrate different approaches to equity-oriented care that incorporate culturally safe and anti-racist care, harm reduction philosophies and trauma and violence-informed care.   

“The study is really about understanding the context of cancer care and what is needed to support equity-oriented care at the organizational level, to lay the foundation for future work,” she said.

She is also working on two studies that examine barriers to accessing cancer treatment for people experiencing social inequities such as homelessness, substance use stigma and extreme poverty.

“We found the lack of stable and safe housing has a major impact on peoples’ access to cancer services,” Horrill said. “More importantly, the current design and delivery of cancer services does not meet the needs or accommodate the circumstances of highly marginalized people, and often results in unacceptable pain, suffering and even premature death.”

PhD candidate Tara Horrill and Dr. Annette Schultz, professor in the College of Nursing, recently published a study in BMC Cancer, an international peer-reviewed journal, comparing cancer incidence, stage of diagnosis and outcomes between First Nations and all other Manitobans. The study was funded by the U of M’s University Indigenous Research Program (UIRP) grant and had input from several university academics, decision-makers and Indigenous community partners.

From her doctoral research, Horrill also published a systematic review of access to oncology care for Indigenous people across Canada in Social Science & Medicine, another international journal, in October.

She said First Nations cancer patients also have poorer survival rates than other Manitobans, another disparity which may result from obstacles they face at various levels of diagnosis, treatment and care.

Horrill describes Canada’s health-care system as fragmented and complicated for status First Nations people living on reserves, where health-care access is funded and sometimes delivered by the federal government. Oncology care, however, is specifically funded and delivered at the provincial level. She noted this jurisdictional gap sometimes leads to governments disputing funds while patients are waiting for care.

“At the individual level, a First Nations patient may not have good access to primary care within their community. They may also have limited financial resources, so they may not be able to afford transportation to a different health-care centre. Add in barriers at the systems and structural level, and accessing care can be very difficult,” she said.

While these compounding barriers explain the later-stage diagnoses, the fact that First Nations cancer patients had higher death rates and shorter survival times is harder to explain, Horrill said.

“We factored the stage at diagnosis into our statistical models, so what we found wasn’t related to that. We don’t know from these results specifically why the outcomes are worse, but we can guess,” she said, noting the impact of social inequities linked to historical and ongoing government policies, resulting in differences in income, education, housing and clean drinking water.

Horrill hopes that by clearly identifying the gaps in care, decision-makers will have the evidence required to address these barriers and provide Indigenous patients with cancer the same level of care as everyone else.  

“From reviewing other research looking at access to cancer care, one of the things we saw was that most, if not all Indigenous patients experience some level of discrimination or racism when trying to access services, which impacts access to care and health outcomes,” she said.

Horrill, who was born and raised in Morden, Man., does not come from an Indigenous background, but was drawn to her research after working as an oncology nurse at CancerCare Manitoba for almost 10 years.

“When you look someone in the eye and they tell you their story of going to their health-care provider over and over and not getting the services they need, I feel a certain sense of obligation to use the knowledge and training I have to make a difference,” she said.

Horrill received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the U of M in 2005. In 2014, she returned to the university to pursue a master’s degree, and then fast-tracked into the College of Nursing’s PhD program. She is currently wrapping up a portion of her doctoral research that looks at health-care provider perspectives on access to oncology care for Indigenous populations.

While she misses the clinical work, Horrill noted conducting research allows her to think creatively and have an impact in a different way.

“When you’re working with patients directly, you can see the impact that you’re making,” she said. “You don’t necessarily see that with research, but research can impact policy and practice on a much bigger level, and indirectly make patient experiences better.”

Keynote speaker Dr. Amanda Kenny, Violet Marshman professor of rural health in the La Trobe University Rural Health School in Bendigo, Australia, presented her lecture on the global need to “disrupt” health systems by investing more in services that will help Indigenous populations, people with disabilities or those that live in rural areas.

“I think many of the major health issues we have are not health issues, but social issues,” Kenny said. “In Australia, our hospitals are full of people. And why are they there? They’re there because we have these big hospitals that are symbols of political power, largely of men who like to cut ribbons and take photos outside them. They are full because we have a massive failure of social care and primary care.”

The event, attended by approximately 160 faculty, students and the public kicked off the Helen Glass Research Symposium, hosted by the College of Nursing, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences. This is the third year the lecture was held at CMHR and the first time the entire symposium was held there.

The three-day, annual event also included workshops, doctoral student presentations and a graduate student research poster competition.

Social concerns continued to be a theme in the poster competition, where PhD candidate Tara Horrill won first place for her project that looks at access to oncology care for Indigenous people in Canada, a subject she became interested in while working at CancerCare Manitoba.

“During that time I noticed we were seeing a number of Indigenous patients being diagnosed with cancer at quite late stages, which is unusual in this day and age with the health-care system we have and the screening tools we have,” she said. “It turns out Indigenous people face a number of barriers to accessing care that other people may not encounter.”

Second place went to Nicole Shead for her entry on inter-professional team empathy among perioperative team clinicians. Shead, who graduated from the College of Nursing in June 2016 and now works at the Selkirk Regional Health Centre, discovered in her practicum experience that a communication gap exists between nurses, surgeons, health-care aides and other members of the perioperative team.

“This lack of team communication was leading to a loss of job satisfaction, burnout, anxiety and stress among team members,” she said. “Empathy is essential in health care and it has been a popular topic in nursing, but focusing on the relationship between the patient and the health-care provider. What about empathy between health-care providers and teams?”

April Gage placed third for her project on Towards Flourishing, a mental health promotion strategy offered through Manitoba’s Families First Home Visiting (FFHV) program. Through interviews with 10 parents and 10 home visitors, she found the strategy is positively promoting the mental health and well-being of families by giving them tangible ways of coping with life stressors.

“I learned that the social determinants of health, such as housing, finances and transportation, greatly impact the mental health of families, and that families benefit from having the support of a home visitor,” said Gage, who works as a public health nurse in the Interlake Eastern Regional Health Authority.

Dr. Christina West, assistant professor at the College of Nursing and chair of the event, called the students who took part in the competition the “future leaders of the nursing profession.”

She added that the event was a great way to honour its namesake, the late Dr. Helen Glass, former director of the University of Manitoba School of Nursing and a dedicated pioneer of the nursing profession.

“Dr. Helen Glass was a national and international nursing leader, who continues to inspire us today,” she said.