Congratulations to Department of Family Medicine faculty members Anne Cockcroft, MD, Professor, Rhian Touyz, MBBCh, PhD, Professor, and Justin Sanders, MD, Associate Professor, who will get major boosts to their research projects thanks to the latest round of grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which increased its total funding in this competition from $325M to $411M.
Anne Cockcroft
Project Title: Youth co-design prevention of gendered personal and interpersonal violence in Botswana
Principal Investigators: Cockcroft, Anne; Andersson, Neil; Mitchell, Claudia; Ng'ombe, Kabo; Sarmiento, Ivan; Shah, Jai; Thabane, Lehana
Co-investigators: Ansari, Umaira; Kgakole, Boitumelo
Funding amount: $1,113,076
Description: Our participatory research project aims to engage young women and men, including LGBTIQ+ individuals, to co-design, with other stakeholders, actions to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) and suicide among youth, challenging violence as a reaction to problems. Youth and other stakeholders will create fuzzy cognitive maps of their perceived causes of IPV and suicide among youth. The maps will inform a survey of experience and perpetration of IPV and related factors. In a pilot dialogic intervention, youth and other stakeholders will discuss the evidence and plan and implement actions to reduce violence. We will evaluate the feasibility of the intervention and its potential impact.
Rhian Touyz
Project Title: Rho kinase as a novel therapeutic target in small vessel disease and vascular dementia – insights from a Notch3 disease
Principal Investigators: Touyz, Rhian M
Co-investigator: Montezano, Augusto C
Funding amount: $998,325
Description: We will study a condition called CADASIL, where patients have vascular dementia due to abnormal and damaged small blood vessels. CADASIL is known- this is due to a mutation of a gene called NOTCH3. We discovered some factors (called Rho kinase and ER stress) that are associated with the abnormal NOTCH3 gene that causes damage to blood vessels leading to dementia. Our objective is to better understand the pathology of vascular dementia, and to discover new molecules specifically Rho kinase and ER stress as potential treatment targets.
Justin Sanders
Project Title: AI-generated electronic health record summaries to promote high-quality communication and care in serious illness: a feasibility trial
Principal Investigators: Sanders, Justin J; Poenaru, Dan
Co-investigators: Abbasgholizadeh Rahimi, Samira; Amoei, Mohsen; Buckeridge, David L; Durieux, Brigitte; Schuster, Tibor; Vallières, Martin
Funding amount: $340,426
Description: Advances in computer science have led to the development of large language models, a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that can swiftly process and summarize large quantities of text data. Our initial findings indicate that these models can succinctly and seemingly accurately summarize dispersed medical record fragments. This may enable clinicians to quickly assimilate information, affording more or more efficient time with patients and enriching visit quality. We propose a two-phase study in which we will first validate AI-generated EHR summaries for implementation in the outpatient palliative care setting. We will then evaluate the implementation and effect of these summaries in a hospital-based palliative care clinic while assessing the feasibility of our trial procedures.
Read the news article from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences:
