Pursuit Award

Dr. Jennifer Stinson is the inaugural Mary Jo Haddad Nursing Chair in Child Health in the Research Institute, a Nurse Practitioner in the Chronic Pain Program, and Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Pain Management, Research and Education at the Hospital for Sick Children. She is also a Professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Stinson’s clinical work focuses on working with children and youth with chronic pain and their families as part of an interdisciplinary pain team in the Department of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine at SickKids. Her major clinical research interests are in the area of pain and symptom management and the use of e-health (internet) and m-health (mobile phones) technologies to improve the assessment and management of pain and other symptoms in children with chronic illnesses.

Dr. Stinson also focuses on interprofessional pain education, which is demonstrated in her leadership in innovative training programs (Pain in Child Health - initially funded by CIHR, Co-I from 2009 to 2015; University of Toronto Centre for Study of Pain) and Pediatric Project ECHO at SickKids (PI funded by MoH), which provides virtual mentorship to community healthcare providers on the management of complex pediatric pain patients. Her innovative program of digital health research has been recognized by numerous awards including CIHR Peter Lougheed New Investigator Award, and early career awards from Canadian Pain Society and International Associate for Study of Pain Childhood Pain SIG.

Her keynote is titled: ‘Accelerating paediatric pain research to adapt to pandemic demands: lessons learned from digital health’

Dr. Caitlyn Gallant recently completed her doctoral studies in Psychology at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at York University, focusing on ways to improve our understanding and treatment of children and youth with brain-based challenges (e.g., neurodevelopmental disabilities, traumatic brain injury) and co-occurring mental health needs.

Caitlyn received her Honours Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec and completed her master’s in Psychology at Brock University. Throughout her graduate studies, she was fortunate enough to be supported by a CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship, a Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology, a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and an IODE Canada War Memorial Scholarship, and had the opportunity to conduct meaningful research in the community. For example, she conducted her doctoral research with Pathstone Mental Health, a community-based mental health agency in the Niagara region, and is currently collaborating with Children’s Mental Health Ontario (CMHO) to learn more about the knowledge, attitudes, and training needs of mental health and autism providers across Ontario.

Caitlyn has  assisted children and adolescents with diverse neurocognitive profiles through a neuropsychology placement in the mental health unit at the St. Catharine's hospital and has engaged in a number of knowledge mobilization initiatives to communicate her findings to knowledge-users. Through her research, she hopes to facilitate community reintegration and improve service pathways to better care for children and youth with brain-based challenges.

Caitlyn’s research presentation today is titled "Understanding the Complex Mental Health Challenges of Children and Adolescents Seeking Community-Based Care."

VIDEO: Learn why Dr. Gallant is excited to be a finalist in this year's Pursuit Awards.

Dr. Katie Mah is a Postdoctoral Associate, co-supervised by Dr. Gail Teachman (Assistant Professor, Western University) and Dr. Barbara Gibson (Senior Scientist, Bloorview Research Institute). She is also a trainee with CRED (Childhood Rehabilitation Ethics Disability lab) at Western University, CDARS (Critical Disability and Rehabilitation Studies unit) at Bloorview Research Institute, and VOICE: Views on Interdisciplinary Childhood Ethics at McGill University. Katie completed her PhD in the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at the University of Toronto, where she was supervised by Dr. Nick Reed.

Drawing on Katie's background in nursing and occupational therapy, and her lived experience of concussion, Katie’s research aims to disrupt conventional ways of thinking and knowing about concussion and young people, while challenging clinicians and researchers to (re)imagine concussion education, care, and research. Using critical arts-based research methods, Katie’s doctoral work explored how young people ‘at risk’ of and living with concussion thought about and acted upon encountering concussion, and how these thoughts and actions were shaped by pervasive societal ways of thinking and knowing about concussion and young people. For this work, she was awarded the Joan Eakin Award for Methodological Excellence in a Qualitative Dissertation, by the Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research at the University of Toronto.

Using multimedia storytelling methods, Katie’s postdoctoral work builds upon her doctoral work to explore how recovery following concussion is discursively understood by young people. She is supported in this work by Postdoctoral Fellowships sponsored by Mitacs Elevate and Western University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.

Katie’s research presentation is titled ‘“Freaked out” by pediatric concussion: an exploration of drawing and interview data produced by children ‘at risk’ and living with concussion.’

VIDEO: Learn why Dr. Mah is thrilled to be a finalist in this year's Pursuit Awards.

Dr. Ruth Braden is a speech pathologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Her research primarily focuses on elucidating gene-brain-behaviour relationships, by refining the speech and language phenotypes of children with genetic and neural pathologies. Ruth’s PhD was awarded by The University of Melbourne in May 2021. Prior to her PhD, Ruth graduated from the Master of Speech Pathology at The University of Melbourne, with first class honours. In 2012, she completed a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Anatomy and Physiology.

Ruth has published lead author papers about the speech and language abilities of individuals with the cortical malformation polymicrogyria, as well as several rare genetic conditions including FOXP1 disorder, SETBP1 haploinsufficiency disorder and DYRK1A syndrome. She has also contributed phenotyping work to larger Next Generation Sequencing studies. Ruth has experience as a lecturer and tutor for The University of Melbourne Master of Speech Pathology course, and has held clinical speech pathology positions working with children and adolescents with intellectual disability. Ruth has made considerable contributions to the speech pathology profession, including being President of the Speech Pathology Alumni Association of The University of Melbourne for three years. Ruth is passionate about increasing the understanding of the features and prognosis of childhood speech and language disorders, in order to lead the development of targeted therapy approaches, and improve outcomes for children and families.

Ruth’s research presentation is titled‘Exploring the aetiology of child speech and language disorders: genes, brain and behaviour.’

VIDEO: Learn why Dr. Braden is excited to be a finalist in this year's Pursuit Awards.