Two faculty members in the School of Population & Public Health have received New Investigator Awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
The CIHR New Investigator Salary Award program provides outstanding new investigators with the opportunity to develop and demonstrate their independence in conducting health research.
Christopher McLeod, an Assistant Professor and co-research lead of the Partnership for Work, Health and Safety, received funding for five years for his research on work and health.
His project, entitled “A comparative and cross-jurisdictional research program on work and health,” focuses on how we can develop social, economic, and workplace policies to reduce work-related health inequalities.
This research will build on previous scholarship that found that the negative association between unemployment and health was smaller in societies with greater economic and social supports for unemployed workers. It will examine a broader range of work experiences and health outcomes across a set of high-income countries that have different ways of organizing and structuring their labour market. This research program will advance our understanding of work-related health inequalities in Canada and internationally.
Christopher McLeod
Eugenia Oviedo-Joekes, an Assistant Professor and CHÉOS Scientist at the Providence Health Care Research Institute, received funding for five years for her work in the field of addiction research.
Her project, entitled “Innovation in Addiction Treatment (IAT) Research Program,” focuses on studying alternative drug addiction treatments to reach and retain vulnerable populations into the health care system.
Based on a previous study, one of the things the IAT research program is testing is whether licensed pain medications can successfully treat the most severe cases of heroin dependency, and is studying how this approach compares to medically prescribed heroin in the ongoing Study to Assess Longer-Term Opioid Medication Effectiveness (SALOME). After patients are effectively stabilized with injection treatment, SALOME will determine if pain medication administered as an oral liquid can be used instead of injections.
Eugenia Oviedo-Joekes