CIHR
GET INVOLVED   FOR INVESTIGATORS  

TRAINEES

BACKGROUND

The CIHR Team in Access to Children’s Mental Health Services led by Patrick McGrath from the IWK Health Centre and Chuck Cunningham from McMaster University brings together the work of several senior Canadian researchers to change the way children’s mental health waiting lists are managed in Canada.

The Team Grant is organized around 5 projects.

  • Project 1 involves policy studies examining barriers to effective waiting list strategies
  • Project 2 is a series of consumer preference studies to determine the characteristics that families and front line professionals would like to see in a children’s mental health waiting list management system
  • Project 3 consists of studies focusing on the development of technology for Project 4
  • Project 4 consists of two randomized controlled trials (RCT)
  • Project 5 will focus on dissemination of results through conventional academic means and through concerted interaction with the children’s mental health decision-making community

WHO CAN BE A TRAINEE?

  • You can become a trainee if your supervisor nominates you to the Training Committee and if the committee approves this nomination
  • Your research should fall within the general research focus of the Team Grant, which includes four broad research areas:
    • Health policy analysis
    • Consumer preference modeling
    • Information technology/telehealth
    • Pediatric mental health with a focus on disruptive behaviour disorders and/or anxiety

WHAT IS THE APPLICATION PROCESS?

  • You should complete the Team Grant Trainee application and have this signed by the Team Grant investigator who nominated you
  • Submit the application and a copy of your CV to the Training Committee

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS TO BEING A TRAINEE?

  • As a Team Grant Trainee you will be provided with opportunities to network and learn from leading health researchers
  • Formal and informal learning and training opportunities will be arranged for the trainees
  • You will be part of a community of researchers and clinicians who are working together to find solutions to waitlists for mental health services
  • You can apply for financial support (i.e., conference presentation awards)

Click here to view the Training Program Application (Microsoft Word format)

TRAINING COMMITTEE

  • Dr. Penny Corkum
    Principal Investigator

    Dr. Corkum is a Registered Psychologist and an Associate Professor of the Clinical Psychology Program in the Department of Psychology at Dalhousie University. She is also the Director of Research and Training at the ADHD Clinic, Colchester Regional Hospital and Scientific Staff at the IWK Health Centre. Her clinical, research and teaching is in the area of child psychopathology. Particular areas of interest are ADHD and sleep problems in elementary-school aged children.


    Dalhousie University
    Department of Psychology
    Life Sciences Centre
    1355 Oxford Street
    Halifax, Nova Scotia
    B3H 4J1
    Phone: (902) 494-5177
    Fax: (902) 494-6585
    Email: penny.corkum@dal.ca
    http://myweb.dal.ca/pvcorkum/



  • Mark Embrett, BSc
    Research Coordinator, CIHR Team in Access to Children's Mental Health Services, Centre for Research in Family Health, IWK

    Mark Embrett is a Research Coordinator at the Centre for Research in Family Help at the IWK Children’s Hospital in Halifax. He graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in 2004 with a Bachelors of Science Degree, Honours in Psychology. He is currently in his final stages of completing a Master’s in Applied Health Services Research at Dalhousie University, under the supervision of Dr. Neil MacKinnon. Mark’s focus now is the use of evidence based policy in a health care setting and policy improvement.


    IWK Health Centre
    5850/5980 University Ave., K8530
    Halifax, NS B3K 6R8
    Phone: (902) 470-7541
    Fax: (902) 470-6534
    Email: Mark.Embrett@iwk.nshealth.ca



  • Meredith Whitney, MHI, BSc
    Research Project Administrator, Centre for Research in Family Health, IWK

    Meredith currently works at the IWK as a Research Project Administrator and as an Assessment Assistant. She obtained a Bachelor of Science from Saint Mary's University in 2003 and a Master of Health Informatics from Dalhousie University in 2007. Meredith has an invested interest in improving the Canadian healthcare system.


    IWK Health Centre
    5850/5980 University Ave., K8532
    Halifax, NS B3K 6R8
    Phone: (902) 470-6387
    Fax: (902) 470-6534
    Email: Meredith.Whitney@iwk.nshealth.ca






CURRENT TRAINEES

  • Debbie Emberly
    Trainee

    I am a registered clinical psychologist having received my Masters in Clinical Psychology from Acadia University (Wolfville, NS) in 2000. I have worked within the IWK Health Centre Mental Health and Addictions Program since that time, initially working with traumatized children and families. I currently work clinically with an intensive community based treatment team working with families and children and adolescents with disruptive behaviour disorders and severe and persistent mental illness. I have just begun my second year of studies at Dalhousie University leading to an experimental PhD in Psychology. I returned to academics to expand my research training to promote the combination of research and clinical practice within the mental health program at the IWK. My doctoral research is focused on knowledge translation, specifically examining attitudes, barriers and utilization of evidenced based treatment among pediatric mental health professionals.

    Email: demberly@dal.ca



  • Fiona Davidson
    Trainee

    I am in my first year as a master’s student in the School Psychology program at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, NS. I completed my honours thesis in Psychology with Dr. Penny Corkum at Dalhousie in 2008. I am currently interested in exploring the impact of sleep deprivation on academic productivity and behaviour management in children with ADHD. For my master’s I will be working under the supervision of Dr. Penny Corkum and Dr. Nez Elik. Outside of school I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, running, photography, cooking and travelling.

    Email: Fiona.Davidson@msvu.ca



  • Karolina Kowalewski
    Trainee

    Karolina is in the Bachelor of Health Sciences program in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary. She is majoring in Health and Society with a concentration in Political Science. Karolina works part-time as a research assistant for the University of Calgary Population Health Intervention Research Centre. She has also been conducting research in the area of children’s mental health for the past three summers. In the 2009/10 school year, Karolina will be conducting her honours thesis project where she will be philosophically analyzing the topic of medicalization. Karolina will be graduating in June 2010 and hopes to pursue a career in medicine. Karolina is interested in health and politics, international development, and pediatrics.

    Email: kkowalew@ucalgary.ca



  • Patricia Pottie
    Trainee

    Trish has a Bachelor of Nursing from Dalhousie and is a Certified Clinical Research Coordinator. She has worked at Toronto Sick Kids Hospital and for the past 12 years has been focused in Pediatric Clinical Trials. Trish is currently enrolled in the Interdisciplinary PhD. program at Dalhousie University. In her spare time, she loves spending time with her 3 beautiful children Jacob, Breana, and Madisyn and her husband Daryl.

    Program Manager
    Family Help: Bringing Health Home
    5850 University Avenue
    IWK Health Centre, 8th floor
    Halifax, NS B3J 3G9
    Canada
    Phone: (902) 470-7934
    Fax: (902) 470-7912
    Email: patricia.pottie@iwk.nshealth.ca



  • Juliana Tobon
    Trainee

    I am currently in the Clinical Psychology program at The University of Western Ontario. I completed an undergraduate degree at McMaster University in Arts & Science and Psychology and did my honours thesis with Dr. Chuck Cunningham on modeling patient preferences for an inpatient child and adolescent unit. I completed my Masters degree under Dr.Graham Reid on service utilization patterns in children’s mental health. I am currently interested in investigating alternative service delivery models in children’s mental health, particularly with respect to chronic mental illness.

    Email: juliana.tobon@uwo.ca



  • Kristina Bradley
    Trainee

    My name is Kristina Bradley and am I completing my last year of my honours degree in Psychology at Dalhousie University. I am from Cape Breton, NS, and my hobbies including reading, piano, and my volunteer activities with the Dalhousie Association of Psychology as the VP Academic Executive. I have recently been accepted to the MA Health Promotion program here at Dal and I plan to continue to focus my research on adolescents and issues surrounding depression, including treatment preference issues in rural Nova Scotia, stigma surrounding mental health care, and the role of family interactions in the transmission of depressive symptoms from mothers to their daughters. My long term goal is to work on prevention programs for internalizing disorders in adolescents of rural areas.

    Email: krisbradley@dal.ca



  • Yvonne Chen
    Trainee

    I graduated with an honours degree in Psychology from McMaster University. I am currently enrolled in Health Research Methodology in the department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatics at McMaster University. As Dr. Charles Cunningham is my supervisor, I have developed deeply, interests in exploring discrete choice conjoint survey design. Our research team studies all different kinds of conjoint design applications to assess patient safety in hospital, knowledge translation preferences of children mental health professionals and parents, understanding how professionals could be more helpful in waitlist reduction, as well as what the professional can do to help parents and their child while waiting for services. As working as a research coordinator in a pediatric eating disorder program at the same time, I am exploring the relationship among, tendency to please others, perfectionism, affect regulation, and eating disorder in adolescent.

    Email: cheny@hhsc.ca



  • Jenn Vriend
    Trainee

    I am currently in my fourth year of the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Dalhousie University. In my research endeavours at Dalhousie, I have studied a breadth of areas including developing and evaluating a behaviour management group for parents that have a child with autism spectrum disorder, examining the relationship between perfectionism and body dysmorphic disorder, and investigating the effects of napping on cognitive performance. For my dissertation, I am currently examining the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition, emotion, and behaviour in children with and without ADHD. After completion of my program, I hope to combine research and practice by maintaining an active pediatric sleep research program while working as a clinical child psychologist. Outside of school, my main interests revolve around athletics such as hockey and running and spending time with family and friends.

    Email: jenn.vriend@dal.ca



  • Janine Olthuis
    Trainee

    I just started my second year in the Clinical Psychology PhD Program at Dalhousie University. I completed my undergraduate degree in Psychology at Smith College (Northampton, MA) in 2008, where my research focused on the correlates of hazardous alcohol use among adolescents. Now I am working with Dr. Sherry Stewart and Dr. Margo Watt at Dalhousie, and am exploring the effectiveness of telephone service delivery of a brief cognitive behavioural intervention for high anxiety sensitivity and its related disorders to rural Nova Scotians. I am also interested in the efficacy of adding physical exercise to treatment for anxiety disorders. In the future I hope to work clinically with children, adolescents, and their families, with a particular focus on the treatment and service delivery of anxiety disorders. Outside of academics I love the outdoors, traveling, and playing sports.

    Email: janine.olthuis@dal.ca



  • Carrah James
    Trainee

    I have recently joined the IWK’s Centre for Research in Family Health as a postdoctoral fellow. My research interests include test development/validation and adherence behavior (i.e., following the instructions of healthcare providers). Within my current position, I hope to apply my research interests to behavioral interventions provided via distance-technology (e.g., internet). In particular, I am interested in determining what individual, socio-cultural, and treatment-delivery factors might account for differences in use/implementation of interventions when access to and support for intervention utilization are provided. One day (many, many years from now), I hope to create a broadband rating scale of physical and psychosocial barriers to treatment adherence that would offer temporally-salient, clinically meaningful, and culturally-informed barrier-reduction strategies based on an individual’s response patterns. I’m excited to be able to participate in the Team in Access to Children’s Mental Health Services Training Program and, other than my work, I like exploring Halifax and hanging out with my dog.

    Email: carrah.james@iwk.nshealth.ca