INMD Connections – July 2012

Other format

Inside this Issue:

Back to INMD Home page

Message from Philip Sherman, INMD Scientific Director

Photo of:From left: Drs. Evan Fraser, Lynn McIntyre and Phil Sherman

INMD was a proud sponsor of the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) annual conference held in Edmonton, Alberta June 11-14, 2012. I was pleased to moderate a session at this conference entitled, Perspectives on health inequity: local to global food security. This session was co-sponsored by INMD and the CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) and featured as speakers Drs. Evan Fraser (U. Guelph) and Lynn McIntyre (U. Calgary).

Dr. Fraser discussed global food insecurity and framed the related debates and potential approaches to addressing food insecurity around four broad paradigms: (1) development of new technology to improve agricultural efficiency and productivity, (2) environmental regulations to improve safety and sustainability of the food system, (3) equitable distribution to address inequitable distribution of foods, and (4) local food sovereignty to increase citizen power in food production and distribution. Evan noted that the four areas are complementary and provide valuable approaches that will contribute to global food security.

Dr. McIntyre discussed income-related household food insecurity from a Canadian perspective. She presented data based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth and the Canadian Community Health Survey indicating that food insecurity is associated with inadequate nutrient intakes among adolescents and adults. Food insecurity is also associated with a number of chronic health conditions, including diabetes. Lynn is a co-investigator on a large CIHR INMD and IPPH co-funded programmatic grant to tackle health inequity entitled, Identifying policy interventions to reduce household food insecurity. This project supports the INMD Food and Health strategic research priority. We look forward to learning about the findings arising from this program of research, which is being led by Dr. Valerie Tarasuk (U. Toronto).

Best wishes for the summer holiday season,

Philip M. Sherman, MD, FRCPC

Announcement of the joint CH.I.L.D.-CIHR Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Network

Photo of:From left: Dr. Grace McCarthy, Kyle Hadwin, Dr. Catherine Pallen, Dr. Phil Sherman

Dr. Grace McCarthy, Chairman of the Board of The Foundation for Children with Intestinal and Liver Disorders (CH.I.L.D), and INMD had the pleasure of officially announcing an important new partnership to fund the creation of the Canadian Children Inflammatory Bowel Disease Network and Data Platform on June 29, 2012 at the Vancouver Children's Hospital. The aim of this national research network and data platform is to pursue a cure for chronic Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) in children, and to improve the quality of care for patients and their families who suffer from these debilitating diseases. This funding opportunity was launched in April and details are available on the CIHR website.

In June of last year, INMD and CH.I.L.D. hosted a national consultative workshop to scope out the Network. The Workshop report is available on the INMD website and a summary of the Workshop has been published in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition (JPGN 2012; 55 (2): 125-130). Five invited commentaries accompany the article and highlight the strength of the proposed governance structure of the Network.

This Network will increase knowledge about the impact of genetic modifiers and local microenvironments on disease phenotype, the clinical course of disease, and variability of disease expression in genetically susceptible children. The Network will also contribute to a better understanding of how pediatric IBD is classified. The research could lead to new predictors of disease, such as biomarkers for disease progression and response to various management strategies.

Thanks to the leadership and dedication of Dr. Grace McCarthy, Mary Parsons and Lindsay Gordon, the co-founders of the CH.I.L.D. Foundation, as well as Tim Murphy, and Dr. Aubrey Tingle for partnering with CIHR to see this initiative through to fruition.

Researcher Profile

Photo of:Jordan Feld, MD, MPH

Jordan Feld, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto
Clinician-Scientist, Toronto Western Hospital Liver Center

Dr. Feld graduated from medical school at the University of Toronto in 1997 and then completed residency programs in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology. Following his clinical training, Dr. Feld focused on developing skills in clinical and laboratory research in liver disease, with a particular interest in viral hepatitis. He completed a clinical research fellowship in hepatology and then spent 4 years doing clinical and laboratory research in the Liver Diseases Branch of the National Institutes of Health. He received a Masters of Public Health with a focus on Infectious Diseases as a Sommer Scholar from Johns Hopkins University and has worked extensively abroad, maintaining a strong interest in International Health.

Dr. Feld recently joined the faculty of the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Clinician-Scientist based at the Toronto Western Hospital Liver Center and the Sandra Rotman Centre for Global Health. Dr. Feld does clinical and translational research in various aspects of hepatitis B and hepatitis C virus infections as the lead investigator for both investigator-initiated and industry-sponsored studies. Dr. Feld has operating grant support from the Canadian Liver Foundation as well as a Clinical Investigatorship award from CIHR through the Institute of Genetics and he is a co-investigator for the only Canadian site in the large NIH-sponsored Hepatitis B Clinical Research Network. In addition to his clinical research interests in hepatitis B reactivation and the genetic determinants of the outcome of antiviral therapy, Dr. Feld's laboratory focuses on understanding treatment non-response in hepatitis C infection and more broadly on understanding the innate antiviral immune response with the goal of developing new strategies for the treatment of viral hepatitis.

Hot Off the Press – New KT Guide: Integrated and End-of-Grant Approaches

Kiera Keown, Senior Advisor, Knowledge Translation

Photo of:Kiera Keown, Senior Advisor, Knowledge Translation

As a researcher, the outcomes of your work could well be highly relevant to a broad range of knowledge users beyond your colleagues and those with similar research programs. Such knowledge users include, for example, patients or individuals with an interest in your field of research, caregivers, and policy makers managing health care programs. How you reach and communicate with these diverse audiences is likely to require innovative strategies that differ from the ways in which you share new evidence with fellow researchers.
Raising the awareness of knowledge users about new research findings and facilitating the use of these findings is the purpose of knowledge translation (KT). As the principal health research funding agency in Canada, CIHR plays a fundamental role in bridging the 'know-do' gap and in ensuring that research findings get into the hands of those who can use them.

While KT is still an emerging field, there exists a need to build capacity not only in developing research proposals that incorporate KT, but also in assessing this aspect of proposals for their potential impact. CIHR has written a Guide to Knowledge Translation Planning at CIHR: Integrated and End-of-Grant Approaches as one resource to serve to fill this gap. Both approaches (integrated and end-of-grant) are described in detail with case studies from successful CIHR grants that bring the concepts to life. Also included are worksheets that serve to help guide your thinking and planning.

The KT Guide is available on the CIHR website or in hard copy by writing to kt-ac@cihr.gc.ca.

CIHR-INMD Funding Available

Operating Grant: Fall 2012 Priority Announcements

  1. Bariatric Care (Bridge Funding)
  2. Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Bridge Funding in partnership with CAG)
  3. INMD Start-up Funds (Bridge funding for Assistant Professors, Clinicians and New Investigators)
  4. Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes (Mandate-related Bridge Funding)

Feedback on the INMD Newsletter

INMD welcomes researchers, partners and other stakeholders to share news stories that relate to areas of our mandate. If you have interesting research results or developments, are organizing a conference or workshop, or wish to report on a past event, we would like to feature them in our newsletter or other communication materials.

Have a comment? Please share it with us! You can also write to subscribe or unsubscribe to our Newsletter. Simply send us an e-mail at: INMDComms@cihr-irsc.gc.ca.

Contact INMD Staff