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LONDON, ON - The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tangible impact on the mental health and wellbeing of Canadian health care workers, who have faced challenges that include increased workloads, resource constraints and fears of exposure to COVID-19.

Announced today, researchers out of Lawson Health Research Institute's MacDonald Franklin OSI Research Centre, have received $2.8 million in funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to launch a project that will support the mental health and wellbeing of Canadian health care workers. The project is titled “Promoting Resilience and Mental Health: Adapting Canada’s Department of National Defence Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR) Program to Support Canadian Health Care Workers.”

The project will adapt the current Road to Mental Readiness Program, created for the Canadian Military. The aim is to identify mental health and wellness barriers in health care institutions, and create a streamlined framework that will build and promote supportive environments within institutions across the nation. 

“This program has been a personalized approach with the military, and we are now adapting it to focus on Canadian health care workers,” explains Dr. Anthony Nazarov, Associate Scientist at Lawson and the MacDonald Franklin OSI Research Centre at St. Joseph’s Health Care London. “We want to educate institutions to create an environment that supports wellness not just at the individual level, but at the institutional level as well.”

The project, which will span 14 months, will assist in the planning, adaptation and testing of the health care focused Road to Mental Readiness Program.

“One of the main reasons we felt this was necessary stems from a recent study our team conducted that focused on moral distress and the mental health of Canadian health care workers,” says Dr. Don Richardson, Lawson Scientist and Director of the MacDonald Franklin OSI Research Centre at St. Joseph’s. “Our preliminary study results found that many Canadian health care workers have been negatively impacted by the pandemic with conditions such as; posttraumatic stress disorder, stress and depression.” 

Once the research team has adapted the current Road to Mental Readiness Program, they will test it with health care workers to confirm its efficacy.

“We hope to have this type of resiliency program adopted by health care organizations across the country,” explains Dr. Richardson. “If proven effective, this would provide additional tools to health care workers to help them cope, improve their resiliency and hopefully mitigate future staff shortages.”

The funding is part of the federal 2021 budget which has committed an investment of $50 million over two years to support projects that address posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma in frontline and essential workers, and others affected by the pandemic. The nine projects announced, totaling an investment of $28.2 million, is the first round of projects being supported through this Budget 2021 commitment.

LONDON, ON – Researchers at Lawson Health Research Institute have launched a pilot study and pilot project called Queer in the Classroom, to examine the benefits of a proactive, inclusive approach within the education system for those who are part of the 2SLBTGQIA+ student community.

“The Queer in the Classroom initiative is so important because when we look at the data, youth in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community are 14 times more likely to die by suicide,” says Dr. Arlene MacDougall, Lawson Scientist, Director of MINDS and Psychiatrist at St. Joseph’s Health Care London. “We need to be focusing on this population who are also experiencing a higher degree of isolation, stigma and substance use.”

The pilot project focuses on professional development for teachers and staff to help create an environment that is tailored to best support 2SLGBTQIA+ students through the additional stress they face as a minority group. 

“This project is about connecting with school boards and teachers to help develop the knowledge and skills to create spaces that go beyond tolerating differences,” explains MacDougall. “The focus is to create an environment that is more affirming, that is more responsive and more proactive rather than reactive.”

The foundation for the pilot project came from a scoping review of existing research on this topic conducted by the research team through the Mental Health INcubator for Disruptive Solutions (MINDS), that looked extensively at how teachers themselves can create a classroom that embraces all students. 

“We further conducted our own research based on a series of interviews of 2SLGBTQIA+ students at both elementary and secondary schools in Ontario, and their parents and teachers. We focused on not only their safety in school, but also being celebrated for who they are,” says Iylah Neves, Lawson Research Assistant through MINDS.  “We drew on all of this research to best inform the practices we are using with the Queer in the Classroom initiative.”

Currently the Queer in the Classroom project is being rolled out on a ‘by-request’ basis. However, the research team is working with a couple of school boards within Ontario to discuss the possibility of wider implementation.

“Queer in the Classroom has been driven by the voices of students with personal experiences who feel there is a deep need for this type of innovation,” says Neves. “It is our responsibility to make those changes so that students can access a safe, inclusive and nurturing environment.”

LONDON, ON – Lawson Health Research Institute has been awarded over $2 million in federal funding for a project focusing on two unique medical imaging systems designed to give unparalleled insight into brain function and disease.  

Today, the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, announced more than $518 million in research infrastructure support through the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). In a live conversation today at 1 p.m., the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, will share more about how the funding will support 102 state-of-the-art projects at 35 post-secondary institutions and research hospitals across the country - helping Canada remain at the forefront of exploration, innovation and discovery. 

“Imaging technologies, such as MRI and PET scanners, have revolutionized our understanding and treatment of major neurological diseases, including dementia and mental illness, by allowing us to study disease mechanisms and their impact on brain health,” says Dr. Keith St. Lawrence, Lawson Scientist and project co-lead. “We are developing and testing two leading-edge systems that will enable imaging of key vascular, metabolic and molecular factors linked to disease.”  

The first system is a head-only PET (positron emission tomography) insert that can be placed in any clinical MRI machine. Combining the molecular specificity of PET with the structural and functional capabilities of MRI, the possibilities for brain imaging will be greatly enhanced. The head-only PET insert being tested in London has been developed by Cubresa Inc., located in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  

“Combined with deep-learning approaches, we could achieve a highly improved sensitivity of the PET insert and reduce the radiation dose by up to 50 times compared to whole-body imaging,” explains Dr. Jonathan Thiessen, Lawson Scientist and project co-lead. “This will be the first commercially available high-resolution brain PET/MRI installed in the world.”  

For example, better diagnosis of different forms of dementias would be possible and researchers could closely compare protein abnormalities in the brain with cognitive function. The low radiation dose allows for long-term studies investigating changes in the brain and neuroinflammation that can lead to major psychiatric diseases and cognitive degeneration or disability. 

The second system uses portable, state-of-the-art optical imaging to increase the reliability of bedside brain monitoring to provide rapid assessment of brain health in restrictive environments.   

“We believe this technology will demonstrate how biomedical optics can improve neurological outcome for surgery and patients in intensive care, provide an accessible technology for assessing neurovascular health, and become a clinically relevant tool for monitoring changes in brain function,” says Dr. St. Lawrence.  

With current systems, the type of data is limited and extremely vulnerable to signal contamination from the scalp which can overshadow signals from the brain. Using the team’s specialized detection approach, the scalp signal contributions could be greatly reduced to get more accurate information on markers of brain activity, such as cerebral blood flow and energy metabolism.  

The team will study use of the system in surgical and intensive-care settings to monitor for cerebral ischemia and metabolic stress, which are the major causes of brain injury. They will also monitor treatment in patients with schizophrenia and study dysfunction in the brain associated with negative symptoms, as cognitive impairment deteriorates with age for some people with the disease. Another goal is to develop a brain-computer interface for patients who are incapable of physical communication. 

“With this funding, we can develop a truly unique advancement that has the potential to test the limits of optics for brain applications,” adds Dr. Thiessen. These two imaging platforms build on previous investments in Lawson Imaging that now exceed over $40 million in research funds since the initial CFI support in hybrid imaging in 2007.

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