CRC in Childrens Health Policy Renewed
Charlotte Waddell, director of the Children’s Health Policy Centre in SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, has recently received a five-year renewal, worth $500,000, as a Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC).
Supported by the federal government, the Canada Research Chairs Program works to assist “exceptional emerging researchers, acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field,” according to the program.
Waddell is concentrating her research in population and public health. Recently, her team published a study of children's mental health indicators in B.C. As well, her group is also working on a study about policies for children with autism to learn how services for these and other vulnerable children may be improved.
But the major effort for the Children's Health Policy Centre now relates to the BC Healthy Connections Project (BCHCP).
The BCHCP started in the summer of 2012. Its purpose? The team is conducting a scientific evaluation of the landmark Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) prevention program. Developed by David Olds in the United States (US) over 30 years ago, NFP involves public health nurses visiting young mothers and their children in their homes, starting prenatally and continuing until children reach their second birthday.
Aimed at addressing two of the leading health problems in Canada — child maltreatment and children's mental disorders — NFP has three primary goals:
· Preventing child maltreatment;
· Improving early childhood mental health and development; and
· Improving mothers’ economic self-sufficiency.
In US trials, NFP has been shown to improve all these outcomes over the long term. But NFP has never been tested in Canada. So the question remains: can this success be repeated in Canada? This is the issue that Waddell and the team — including co-investigators from McMaster University, UBC, the University of Victoria, and the Public Health Agency of Canada — are now investigating. David Olds is consulting on the project. This scientific evaluation is funded by the BC Ministry of Health with support from the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development and five participating BC Health Authorities. The project’s Scientific Director is Nicole Catherine, a graduate of the University of Toronto and UBC and now an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU.
Waddell’s remaining focus, the Children’s Mental Health Research Quarterly, is an electronic publication that she and the team launched in 2007, funded by BC’s Ministry of Children and Family Development. In each of the four yearly issues, the team captures the best available research on a variety of children’s mental heath topics. Topics have included: the economics of children's mental health, preventing problematic anxiety, and promoting healthy dating relationships. The Quarterly provides ongoing systematic review evidence to policymakers, practitioners and the public using methods adapted from the Cochrane Collaboration and Evidence-Based Mental Health.
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