2024 Scholarships and Grants Winners
PhD Student Research Grant
Christine Garinger
Christine is a CNA certified Community Health Nurse and hold a Masters degree in Health Information Science from Western University. She is in the PhD program at the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing at Western University.
Christine's study uses a qualitative Interpretive Description approach to explore how Registered Nurses, in diverse practice settings and roles, enact nursing advocacy with and for women who experience interpersonal violence. Christine has enjoyed over 2 decades of direct nursing practice focused on adolescent and adult psychiatry and crisis intervention and the health impacts of trauma, substance use and violence against women. Her indirect nursing practice has included program evaluation of community health programs, management and leadership roles, and educating and mentoring students and new professionals.
PhD Student Research Grant
Ainsley Miller
PhD Student Research Grant - Runner Up
Jessica Mor
Jessica Mor is a PhD Candidate within the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto, a Research Coordinator within the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Toronto Metropolitan University, and a Registered Nurse. Her clinical background is in obstetrics and public health nursing.
Jessica’s doctoral research focuses on the role of private companies in fostering partnerships between patient advocates and the pharmaceutical and health sectors. Her work delves into the impact of these collaborations on patient engagement in policy processes. She is pioneering the mapping of an emerging industry dedicated to addressing the need for patient representation in policy decision-making about drugs. This qualitative project will utilize three forms of data: 1) publicly available documents from companies who facilitate the sharing of patient experiences; 2) participant interviews with company employees; and 3) observation of relevant industry and policy events.
Graduate Scholarship
Jessica Ackerman
Jessica is a first year PhD student (Nursing) at McMaster University and a Research Trainee within the PROTECT virtual care lab at Hamilton Health Sciences. Clinically, Jessica is a Registered Nurse in the Emergency Department at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center and a sessional faculty instructor at Humber College.
Jessica’s doctoral research focuses on the design of virtual care and remote monitoring technologies for the improvement of care delivery in patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Canadian women and up to 10% of these women are diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Once diagnosed, patients are placed on cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors (an oral anticancer agent) as first-line therapy which can lengthen overall survival and progression-free survival rates but place a profound burden on patient’s physical and psychological well-being. Despite receiving a terminal diagnosis, patients are faced with maintaining their quality of life that is often plagued with frequent surveillance monitoring, multiple hospital visits, overcrowded outpatient clinics, long travel and geographical barriers, across centres. This can result in fragmented care delivery and unmet healthcare needs such as poor symptom control, reduced medication adherence, lack of timely communication with their oncology teams and minimal support along the cancer care continuum.
The aim of Jessica’s multi-phased research study is to co-design a novel, hospital-to-home virtual care system that will target the multifaceted nature of metastatic breast cancer and provide a more comprehensive, innovative approach to cancer care delivery for this population. This award will allow for Jessica and her team to purchase data analytic and review software for the first phase of her study.
Conference Grant Award
Genevieve Armstrong
Genevieve Armstrong is a Professor in Nursing at Humber College and a PhD Candidate, collaborative in nursing and global health, at the University of Toronto. She was a former Public Health Nurse in the Tuberculosis (TB) Program at Toronto Public Health for over 10 years, and has also contributed to TB care nationally and internationally in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and in Barcelona, Spain. Passionate about health equity and social justice, her PhD thesis examines how access to TB diagnosis and treatment can be improved for migrants with a precarious immigration status in Canada, through equitable TB policies and practices.
Poor tuberculosis (TB) outcomes among migrants with a precarious immigration status (e.g., undocumented migrants) are driven by inequitable TB policies that affect migrants’ access to care and do not address their social determinants of health. The purpose of my critical qualitative study is to assess the development and operationalization of TB policies and practices using an equity-oriented lens with regard to precarious migrants in three Canadian provinces, and identify potential solutions to improve current TB policies. Data will be collected via individual interviews with policy makers and implementers. Knowledge will be mobilized through an executive summary of recommendations to be shared with the Provincial and Federal Ministers of Health.
New Member Award
Ovesiri Fueta
Ovesiri is a Master of Science in Nursing student at the University of Western Ontario. She is interested in digital health as well as a nurse informaticist at London Health Sciences Centre.
Ovesiri's research project is to evaluate how a recently implemented digital health tool known as Health Information Exchange (HIE) impacts emergency department nurses and physician workflows. HIE platforms have been implemented in various countries to improve interoperability. To improve interoperability of our systems, Ontario Health has implemented the Ontario eHub HIE which serves as a repository for long term care and tertiary centres to send and receive information. This allows for information sharing across electronic health records reducing information silos across organizations and health care settings.
New Member Award
Katherine De Lucia
Katherine is a registered nurse with a background in public health nursing, currently pursuing a Master of Science in Nursing degree at Western University, entering their second year. Katherine's master’s thesis focuses on evaluating an outpatient clinical program for stroke patients. Professionally, Katherine is dedicated to advancing my research in clinical program evaluations, with a future focus on expanding my research to include a diverse range of clinical programs and services.
There is limited research evaluating interventions offered through outpatient stroke rehabilitation programs, making it challenging to assess their role and value within stroke rehabilitation as a whole. This study aims to evaluate a six-week virtual memory training program offered through an outpatient stroke rehabilitation program in London, Ontario. It seeks to better understanding virtual memory training program goals, intended outcomes, implementation challenges, strengths, and areas for program improvement and expansion through the perspectives of program providers and administrators. The potential research findings aim to inform decision-making for program implementers, enhance service delivery, program logistics, and patient outcomes.
New Member Award
Madison Busso
Undergraduate Award
Merit Sadek
Undergraduate Award
Khalila Campbell-Fagan
Khalila is a fourth year nursing student at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). She enjoys participating in research and volunteers with the Bladder Cancer Awareness Society at TMU.
She is currently working on a manuscript with Dr. Metersky which analyzes a case study regarding patient and family involvement in collaborative practice. Their research explores which roles patients should enact in order to self-manage and participate in their care while effectively collaborating with the inter-professional team. Ultimately, to examine how putting patients in a self-manager role can instead push patients further away from being able to collaborate with the inter-professional team and receive optimal health outcomes.