More than a dozen CHEPA members involved in COVID-19 research and activities
More than one dozen CHEPA members and students are involved in research studies, advisory committees and knowledge transfer activities related to the COVID-19 pandemic:
Elizabeth Alvarez leads a group of investigators that includes Laura Anderson, Emma Apatu, Ellen Amster, Katherine Boothe and Health Policy PhD student Ahmed Belal in research that is registered with the World Pandemic Research Network.“Physical distancing policies and their effect on the epidemiology of COVID-19: A multi-national comparative study” is addressing social distancing policies (and related policies) and the epidemiology of COVID.
- Alvarez also won an award from the National Science Foundation-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) Network and the CONVERGE facility housed at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder for a study entitled “Policy Frameworks and Impacts on the Epidemiology of COVID-19”, COVID-19 Working Groups for Public Health and Social Sciences Research“.
Andrew Costa, the Schlegel Research Chair in Clinical Epidemiology & Aging, is involved in COVID research on multiple fronts. He is:
- Nominated Principal Investigator of COREG, the McMaster regional (including Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Niagara) inpatient and outpatient COVID-19 patients registry, which collects case data on confirmed COVID-19 hospital inpatients, as well as positive outpatients, in collaboration with the WHO International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC). The information gathered through the research, which is supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), informs rapid decision-making and projections, sub-studies, extensions and linkage.
- Working with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care and Public Health Ontario to analyze nursing home COVID-19 data.
- Working with the Ministry of Health (MOH) to re-create and analyze a retirement home cohort linked to COVID data. “COVID-19: Secondary Analyses of Ontario COVID-19 Data to Inform Planning and Response for Priority Populations” informs questions that may help current and future preventative policies and interventions.
- Part of the large Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA)’s COVID-19 study. It draws from the 50,000 Canadians who are participating in the broader CLSA study to examine the experiences of older adults during the pandemic — how they cope, the impacts on their physical and mental health and changes to how they access health-care services.
Michel Grignon, who has previously researched and published extensively about long-term care insurance, has been sharing his knowledge about the topic within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
John Lavis, director of the McMaster Health Forum, co-leads COVID-END, a global partnership of more than 40 evidence synthesis, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and guideline groups. The Forum/Rapid Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE) staff are facilitating this work. The Forum is also preparing rapid-evidence profiles as part of the MOH’s evidence synthesis platform to support provincial decision-making with very short turn-around times. These include documents on identifying strategies for dealing with pandemic-related mental health and addictions issues (PDF) and other resources to support decision-makers as they respond to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mitch Levine is involved in research into the impact of COVID-19 on the experience of rheumatology patients. More than 12,000 patients with rheumatic diseases are being surveyed to evaluate how the existence of COVID-19 in the community affects this potentially vulnerable population. The primary goal is to determine whether the presence of specific rheumatic diseases or medications may place these patients at a greater or decreased risk of developing COVID-19. Researchers will evaluate how the pandemic affects their choices to continue medications, how it affects the control of their disease, mental health and how they communicate with their rheumatologists. PhD student Kevin Kennedy, supervised by Feng Xie, is also involved in the research.
Lisa Schwartz, McMaster’s Arnold L. Johnson Chair in Health Care Ethics, is a member of advisory committees for both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ontario government that are providing guidance to health and political officials on ethical issues related to the pandemic and to advisory boards related to COVID clinical studies. She is also involved with several research studies:
- She is co-principal investigator with McGill University’s Matthew Hunt in the study “Ethical tensions of implementing research during a crisis: Understanding moral experiences of healthcare providers caring for patients who are enrolled in CoViD-19 clinical trials,” led by Health Research Methodology PhD candidate Rachel Yantzi for her doctoral work, supervised by Schwartz.
- Schwartz is also on the advisory committee for a national CIHR-funded study led by McMaster’s Dr. Donald Arnold entitled “A randomized open-label trial of convalescent plasma for hospitalized adults with acute COVID-19 respiratory illness (CONCOR-1)”
- She has presented and moderated a number of global webinars related to the ethical issues associated with the provision of health care during the pandemic, including a webinar entitled “Beyond ‘good enough’: How to engage communities with COVID-19 research quickly and effectively” that drew from her advisory work for a WHO task force on Good Participatory Practices in Emerging Pathogens.
Hsien Seow, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Palliative Care and Health System Innovation, is principal investigator in a study looking at “The #Caremongering social media campaign: Understanding its impact and adaptability to combat social isolation among older adults affected by COVID-19“. Julia Abelson is a co-investigator on the study, which is funded by the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging (MIRA).
Arthur Sweetman, Ontario Research Chair in Health Human Resources, is a member of an external advisory group appointed by the provincial government in February to provide strategic advice on staffing in the long-term care sector across the province.
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