“Our long-term objective is for a healthy, sustainable Central Cape Breton where members are actively engaged in their community. To realize that objective, our belief is there must be a solid foundation of community members who have strong social relationships and are involved and contributing to the life of their community. We seek to determine what factors encourage and prevent community members from being engaged.
To accomplish this goal, we will conduct focus groups with community leaders and interested community members to discover their views on community engagement and related strengths and vulnerabilities in their community. Individuals not present at the community meetings and therefore not involved in the focus groups will be invited to take part in a semi structured interview. In addition, surveys will be delivered via Canada Post to each home in the Central Cape Breton catchment under review. We will model processes of community engagement by first having conversations with leaders and interested community members from the communities included within Central Cape Breton. Through the focus groups and semi structured interviews, we will learn about community issues and explore the most effective ways to encourage participation in our study. Thematic analysis will conducted on the qualitative component of this study (focus groups and semi structured interviews). Descriptive statistics will be used to analyze information in the survey that can be quantified e.g. number of men, number of women, number of children, number of those requiring child care, access to transportation. Following the analysis and summation of the data, we will distribute our results throughout the Central Cape Breton communities as well as to decision-makers such as the Municipal Council, Community Health Board and Cape Breton University.”
Team:
Debbie Brennick, Dorothy Barnard, Juanita MacNeil, Cathy MacMillan, Hugh MacNeil, Murdell MacNeil, Audrey Walsh (coach)
MR Site: Iona, Cape Breton
“Our research plan is to trace the ways that female-identifying girls under age 18 in the Halifax area resist grooming recruitment into the sex trade. We want to understand how these youth have manifested agency and what role their families and communities have played in supporting them. We are also interested in the community resources that youth have interacted with and how these may have contributed to their resiliency. Our research team is diverse, including professionals from the health care, justice, and social service sectors, as well as a graduate student and a medical student interested in community-based research. We will use a qualitative research approach, focusing, primarily, on individual experience by conducting interviews with 12 to 20 young women. These interviews will be carried out by two members of our research team with experience working with vulnerable youth. Analysis of these interviews will generate common themes, allowing us to identify what is currently working to help youth resist grooming recruitment in communities, how existing services can be enhanced/supported, and what youth identify as priorities for new policies and resources. This is a participatory study that situates youth experiences and points of view at its core with the goal of facilitating community-supported change for vulnerable youth in the Halifax area.”
Team:
Tania Wong, Anthony McGrath, Leisha Seymour, Elizabeth Joyce, Sue Goyette, Sawini Fernando, Jillian Filliter (coach)
MR Site: Dickson, Halifax
“People experiencing chronic homelessness and alcohol addiction frequently become ill and often use health care, social, and criminal justice services. We decided to build a research project that aims to understand the lived experiences of men experiencing chronic homelessness, and suffer from severe chronic alcohol addiction. Our team, made up of health care, social services, police professionals and community members, will work together to identify and estimate the costs of 20 men experiencing chronic homelessness and alcohol addiction. We will supplement the cost analysis data with a qualitative exploration of the participant’s perspectives in regards to their past and current life experiences and how they may be better supported by the community. Our research will help to create a broad picture of how services are used by these men, the basic costs of these services, and the men’s perspective of their current situation. We plan to use all of this data to inform future coordinated, multi-sector approaches to meeting the needs of people experiencing chronic homelessness and severe alcohol addiction.”
Team:
Judah Goldstein, Kristy Barnaby, Keisha Jefferies, Linda Carvery, Abdullah Qureshi, Amit Parasram, Margaret Casey, Thomas Brothers, Christy Woolcott (coach), Christopher Giacomantonio (coach)
MR Site: North End Halifax
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PROJECTS
ADOLESCENTS IDENTIFYING THEIR BARRIERS TO ACCESS MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION SERVICES
“Mental health disorders including addictions are common in the Canadian population. Many of these disorders have their onset during adolescence and most persist into adulthood. These disorders cause significant burden in the first three decades of life and often beyond.
In many other communities across Canada there are gaps in the provision of care for adolescents with mental health disorders; only one out of five youth with a mental health illness receive the help they need. Patients and parents have reported troubles accessing services because poor availability, acceptability, affordability, and/or because the services available do not accommodate the patients or their family’s needs. Youth are particularly vulnerable to the inadequate provision of care, because available mental health services have often been planned to serve the needs of younger children and adults not youth.
In Antigonish Nova Scotia, parents, teachers, and health care providers have anecdotally identified a gap between need for and access to mental health and addiction services in the teenage population. The project will ask high school students at the local high school, representing teenagers in the community, if they perceive there are barriers to receiving mental health services in the community. We hope the results of this study will provide information to improve and plan services appropriate to their needs.”
Team:
Oliva Ortiz-Alvarez, Regina Cozzi, Heather Blackburn, Iker Gondra (coach)
MR Site: Antigonish
WHY DO FIRST NATIONS MEMBERS OF PAQTNKEK COMMUNITY CONSUME POP AND CONCENTRATED ENERGY DRINKS?
“Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation is a First Nations (FN) Community in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, with a total population of 600 people; nearly 2/3 are FN. Community members, local shopkeepers and a program to support healthy living for children and families have identified a high level of pop consumption by all members living in the community. Efforts to work with families in our program, Teaching Eating and Activity Management (TEAM), have found this practice a difficult challenge to overcome. The consumption of pop across Canada has decreased in recent years while consumption of concentrated energy drinks (CEDs) has increased over 600%. FN youth in some parts of this country have been noted to consume significant quantities of such drinks which appear to be the major source of carbohydrate calories in their diets. At Paqtnkek FN, it is noted that pop is consumed in significant quantities by members of all ages. The quantity of CEDs consumed is unknown. The objective of our research is to quantify pop and CED consumption in Paqtnkek and explore related attitudes and behaviours.
This study consists of two sub-studies to gather data on pop and CED sales at community vendors over a period of 4 months. We hope to collect data in a minimum of 70% of FN community members over age 14 years using questionnaires. We will devise separate questionnaires for 14-17 year olds and for adults. This information will be used for future community education and advocacy.”
Team:
Michelle MacGrath, Angela Lafford, Minoli Amit, Maureen Allen, Mary Gorman, Linda Peters, Matthew Murphy (coach)
MR Site: Antigonish
EVALUATING PATTERNS OF USE AND ESTIMATING COSTS OF HEALTH CARE, SOCIAL, POLICE, AND JUSTICE SERVICES AMONG CHRONICALLY HOMELESS, MIDDLE AGED MEN WITH ALCOHOL USE DISORDER: A MULTI-SECTOR, SEQUENTIAL METHODS CASE SERIES.
VOICES OF RESILIENCE: WHAT DO YOUNG WOMEN IN HALIFAX AREA IDENTIFY AS HELPING THEM TO RESIST RECRUITMENT INTO THE SEX TRADE?
TOGETHER WE CAN CREATE A HEALTHY COMMUNITY!
WHAT ARE THE PERCEIVED BARRIERS AND FACILITATORS TO COOKING AT HOME FOR OLDER ADULTS LIVING IN DARTMOUTH NORTH? WHAT SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE TO SUPPORT THOSE IN NEED?
“Health Canada’s 2019 food guide strongly encourages preparing meals from scratch at home in order to maintain a healthy diet. This may present a challenge for older people who experience complex struggles that impact their ability to cook, such as mobility issues, chronic illnesses or mental health issues, as well as lack of financial resources or kitchen amenities. Furthermore, older adults who live alone may experience additional challenges if they have little to no family or social supports. In addition, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected older adults. The COVID-19 pandemic has in many cases strongly and adversely impacted the day to day life of older adults living alone in the community in several dimensions. It is unclear how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted cooking and food access for older adults.
For these reasons, we believe that there is an opportunity to better understand the factors that may be preventing seniors from cooking healthy food for themselves at home, and to determine what supports already exist to address these issues in the community and what gaps may need to be addressed. This study will involve qualitative analysis of one-on-one semi-structured interviews with community dwelling older adults to understand the experience of, and barriers/enablers to cooking at home generally, as well as their experiences of cooking, food access and social isolation throughout the COVID-19 emergency.”
Team:
Melissa Rankin, Katherine Howlett, Kelly Hunter, Heather Bolivar-Peddle, Ashty Nanakaly, Kathleen Chan, Amy Grant (Coach)
MR Site: Dartmouth General Hospital
IN THEIR WORDS: BARRIERS FOR YOUTH USING MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES
“Government of Canada (GoC) defines mental health as the state of your psychological and emotional well-being. GoC acknowledges that mental health is a necessary resource for living a healthy life and a main factor in overall health. GoC emphasizes that mental health does not mean the same thing as mental health conditions; however, poor mental health can lead to mental and physical illness. Compromised mental health (cMH) is common among Canadian youth, including those living in Nova Scotia (NS). Prevention and early identification of cMH is effective in reducing rates of mental health conditions. Many factors contribute to cMH. Factors vary by age, social situation, cultural considerations, geographic location, and other health conditions. It is unclear if the existing mental health resources for youth in NS are available and accessible to this population in ways that they are able to and interested in engaging with. Our project seeks to have one-on-one semi-structured conversations with a group of 32 youth, in grades 11 and 12 at a high school in Halifax Regional Municipality, about their knowledge of and experience with mental health supports serving their demographic group. Participation is voluntary. Learnings from these conversations will be analyzed and presented to relevant organizations to propose a plan to optimize mental health resources for NS youth.”
Team:
Lauren Hutton, Abeer Ali, Alex Manuele, Ashwini More, Jee In Kim, Maneesha Funawardena, Pratima Gulati, Yasmin Abdin, Finlay Maguire (Coach), Rosemary Ricciardelli (Coach)
MR Site: Halifax Virtual Workshop 2021
COMMERCIAL FISH HARVESTERS AND MENTAL WELLNESS RESOURCES: A QUALITATIVE APPROACH
Fish harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador work in high-risk environments in an industry where serious injuries or fatalities are common. Not all harm is physical; Harvesters’ can experience harmful effects to their mental health and well-being while working. This raises the question “where do fish harvesters and their families turn to for support?”. To improve the mental wellness resources available to the industry, we must gain an understanding of the experiences of those who need to access them. For this project, we will interview and have conversations with harvesters from the fishing industry in Newfoundland regarding how they address their mental wellness. Using the results from this project we will examine the gaps between the resources they need to maintain mental wellness and what they have access to. Identifying barriers to access is an important first step for addressing the mental health and well-being of fish harvesters and helps to ensure a safe and healthy working environment.”
Team:
Caitlin Newell, Morgane Shepperd, Emily Walsh, James Shewmake, Heather Carnahan (Coach), Rosemary Ricciardelli (Coach)
MR Site: Newfoundland Virtual Workshop 2021
