Most of us know that driving comes with many risks and that driving can be dangerous. However, thankfully, there are many things we can do to make driving a safer experience for us and for the others on the road.

For teenagers, it’s really important to learn how to make driving safer as they start learning how to drive. A few ways to make driving safer is to prevent distracted driving and to learn the rules of the road. Learning these skills can be lifesaving!

Ms. Martin’s class is learning about how to make driving a safer experience for teenagers.The class has found a very useful link which highlights the many ways that we can all make driving a safer experience for teens:

Thank you to Ms. Martin’s class for sharing this link with us!

We know that sharing this information will make the road safer for not only teenagers, but for everyone who is driving!

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The mentors come from a variety of backgrounds including cognitive science, psychology, biology, health sciences, and philanthropy and non-profit leadership. Each of these backgrounds bring a compelling perspective to the challenge.

“I think coming from a psychology background has allowed me to have strengths regarding the mental health portion of this challenge – understanding factors that can contribute to stress, mental illness, and even how long it can take the brain to recover from trauma,” Michaela Keogh says.

Roxana Barbu stresses her personal experience and how it integrates with the challenge. She worked as a literary counselor for six weeks with the Peawanuck First Nation, who were evacuated due to the Winisk Flood. “That’s what attracted me to the challenge, the community I worked in was evacuated in ’86.” The challenge “has a focus on First Nations, which is important to me.” Roxana is also inspired by the One Health approach because it is “interdisciplinary, that’s my whole passion, my whole research,” she says.

Sam Petrie enjoys the interdisciplinary aspect of the challenge as well. His graduate research looks at complex adaptive health systems, and he has learned that “whenever you implicate a system, there will always be unintended consequences.” He is using this knowledge to nudge students to think of not only what can go right in their framework, but also what could happen despite well-intentioned plans.

***

While all of the mentors bring their own set of skills to the challenge, being a mentor can still be a tricky position as it requires a careful balance of being a peer and a leader. One way to manage this balance is to show vulnerability. “[I] show my ignorance too and willingness to learn,” Roxana says. And, as Caprise Perrineau says, “I have also been a person who has failed a lot. I have made many, many mistakes and have learned to recover from difficult scenarios. The ability to share your failures and learn from others is a skill that is important to mentorship.”

It is also important to let students come up with their own ideas. As Mackenzie Doiron says, “it’s not a mentor’s job to do work for the group, or to get their fingerprints all over the group’s work.” This is also important when it comes to how ideas are evaluated during meetings. As Sam says, “when an idea is brought to the table, you [as a mentor] should offer your thoughts last.”

One of the greatest challenges of being a mentor is time management, which mentors spoke of as requiring creativity to manage. “It’s challenging to want your group to be fully committed (and win) while also watching them become a little stressed over their other responsibilities. It’s also a challenge to make sure that the students know that their course work should come first. I think it’s a bit of a learning curve,” Michaela says. “Be willing to modify your schedule on a weekly basis,” Roxana adds. Even though course work can be a stressor, the challenge has had a positive impact in managing these very stressors. “Especially around this time of the year, students are stressed and feeling a little down so it’s wonderful to be able to be involved in something that ignites the passion in them,” Michaela says.

***

This year’s challenge brings an important issue to the forefront. To recap, the mentors have been leading groups of students to create a framework to mitigate the physical and mental health risks, and facilitate community rebuilding following a natural disaster, with a particular focus on First Nations communities in Canada’s northern regions. During the ONE HEALtH launch, guest speakers Craig Linklater and Darrel Shorting provided an account of living through the evacuation of Little Saskatchewan First Nation in Manitoba due to a 2011 manmade flood. Their stories had a strong impact on students and mentors alike.

“I have learned a lot about the initial knowledge, exposure and engagement most students have about and with Indigenous communities. I have also learned sadly that it is very easy for Canadians to be sheltered from and/or ignore the difficulties of others,” Caprise says. Many students and mentors had no prior knowledge of these floods. As Sam realised his lack of knowledge, he felt “shame and disgust and anger” at his not knowing. And as Roxana says, “most student-targeted experiences don’t have this reality check.”

Yet this reality check makes the challenge so impactful. The challenge becomes “not just about improving your CV but about improving yourself as a person and contributing from now on,” Roxana says. And Sam agrees, noting it can be easy to “get caught in the rat race,” but this challenge encourages everyone to “take time out of your day to think of the actual meaning of what you’re doing.”

The challenge stresses the importance of looking at a problem from multiple perspectives. As Mack says, “a swiftly executed solution looks really good on paper, but trying to create a framework where all of the aspects of the problem can be considered is a much more sustainable approach to tackling public health issues.” Indeed, the focus is on the complexity of the issue, rather than a quick solution.

The ONE HEALtH Student Challenge brings together students, mentors, and consultants from a variety of backgrounds to examine an issue and think of potential solutions. “It has been a pleasure getting to know my group, and learning from them as much as they’re learning from me,” Mack says. We are happy to hear that the mentor experience has been a meaningful one. As Roxana says, “you not only grow as a mentor, but as a person.”

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Our senior and graduate mentors are:

Roxana Barbu, MA
PhD Student in Cognitive Science

Mackenzie Doiron, MA
PhD Student in Psychology

Michaela Keogh
Masters Student in Philanthropy and Non-profit Leadership

Caprise Perrineau
Undergraduate Student in Biology

Samuel Petrie
Masters Student in Health Sciences

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Our challenge ends this Friday November 16! We can’t wait to see what our teams have come up with! Stay tuned to hear more about the challenge, and be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates (@CHAIM_Centre)!

***

This past Friday, the CHAIM Centre hosted the official launch event for the ONE HEALtH Student Challenge 2018. The event was marked with fabulous speakers, whose personal and professional stories gave the student participants great insight into a One Health perspective, and into the Challenge itself. The One Health approach focuses on the connections between human health, animal/wildlife health, and the health of the environment. Essentially, these are all inextricably connected, and one affects the other. While this may seem intuitive, this approach is often underutilized in problem solving. The challenge this year is for students to design a plan to mitigate the physical and mental health risks, and facilitate community rebuilding following a natural disaster, with a particular focus on First Nations communities in Canada’s northern regions. For students participating, thinking of animal and environmental factors may be the toughest part. As Kim Matheson, director of the CHAIM Centre, pointed out, “it’s going to be way easier to think of the human aspect.” Students must push themselves to think of different perspectives.

A focus of the ONE HEALtH Student Challenge 2018 is to think beyond one’s own discipline. Paul Pechan, from the Lugwig Maximilians Universität Müchen, spoke about his personal experience in a career switch from plant physiology to science communications. (Of course, this simplifies many subtleties and accomplishments in between). Pechan advised students to “bring people together in an environment that can help you move forward with your questions.” He stressed that “you don’t have to be an expert in everything,” as any problem “cannot be solved with just the one perspective.” This was a goal of the launch event: to bring students, project consultants*, and guest speakers together to start thinking of out of the box ways to approach a problem.

What will students gain from this challenge? While an internship in a research lab is at stake, the focus is on the learning experience to be gained. Cathy Edwards, research facilitator and guest speaker at the launch, says she is hoping that students learn “the value of falling in love with a problem.” Moreover, she hopes students are “taking the time to gain empathy and develop insights based on the lived experience.”

The lived experience can only be understood from those who have lived it (of course), and guest speakers Craig Linklater and Darrel Shorting provided a moving account of living through the evacuation of Little Saskatchewan due to a 2011 manmade flood. Shorting spoke of the devastating effects of a twenty-four hour notice of evacuation, and provided a vivid recount as he “literally saw … water rising.” The community is still (seven years later) struggling to get home again. For those who have been able to return, it has been difficult getting used to new living situations which are a stark contrast to their way of life prior to the evacuation. Shorting vividly described damage to the ecosystem, infrastructure, and community gathering spots that have yet to be repaired. This has affected the physical and mental health of evacuees, and the community at large, including elders, councillors, families, youth, and children who have never lived in the community yet as their family is still in evacuation. Shorting said, “this 2011 flood created hardship for our people.” As a councillor, he still continues to “receive phone calls at 1:30 in the morning” from displaced community members. Through listening to Linklater and Shorting speak, we hope students not only gain empathy and insight, but use this lived experience to create an effective framework that can mitigate the harmful and long-lasting effects of a future crisis.

Over the next six weeks, student teams will be working on their frameworks with the help of graduate mentors and project consultants. They will be seeking new perspectives while considering human, animal, and environmental factors of a natural disaster. But most importantly, in considering a problem, as Kim Matheson urged students, it is imperative to “be brave, go beyond the things that you know.”

We look forward to seeing these frameworks develop over the next few weeks, and will be posting updates here.**

*Our project consultants range from faculty in neuroscience, biology, communications and environmental engineering, just to name a few. You can find a list of our consultants here: /chaimcentre/the-2018-challenge/one-health-consultants/

**And on our Twitter account: @CHAIM_Centre

So who are these enterprising colleagues?

Our most recent presentation at the CHAIM Brown Bag Series featured Dr. Katie Gunnell who presented her interests in the relationship between psychological health and exercise. While originally trained in kinesiology on a path to physiotherapy, Gunnell found that, often, “people weren’t motivated to do the prescribed exercises. They wanted a cure, but weren’t willing to do the work—so why are some people motivated and others are not?” Gunnell gravitated towards motivational research, as well as further exploring the relations between physical activity and mental or psychological health.

While in a previous research position at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute (CHEO-RI), Gunnell worked alongside physiologists and public health specialists to determine psychological effects of screen-time. “Youth are exposed to screens all the time. We need to gain more knowledge to bring attention to red flags so we can learn to use screens to our advantage as opposed to having them have negative impacts on our health.” Gunnell continues to examine the relations between screen-time and physical and mental health: is there bad vs. good screen time? How can quality indicators of screen-time be developed? What are the qualitative and quantitative components in screen time?  Having worked in interdisciplinary teams at the CHEO-RI, and throughout her educational career through Brock University, University of British Columbia, and University of Ottawa, Gunnell values the potential from collaboration of interdisciplinary teams in research, as well as in knowledge dissemination and translation. Still involved in knowledge dissemination at the CHEO-RI, Gunnell acknowledges the importance of “actively working with knowledge users” to inform, engage, and inspire healthy active living.

Similarly, Dr. Rachel Burns is interested in healthy behaviours and health outcomes. Burns came to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ in July 2017 following a post-doc at McGill University, where she examined relations between mental health and diabetes. Using large observational data sets, Burns investigated how mental health influences well-being and overall health outcomes. Since starting at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Burns has been working with big data sets to examine patterns related to depression and diabetes development over time. For example, she is currently exploring the differential implications of depressive symptoms over a long period of time compared to periodic, short periods of time, in relation to diabetes outcomes. Alongside this work, she is examining whether the well-being of one’s romantic partner might be implicated in the evolution of diabetes.

Burns first blended her interests of psychology and biology during her undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph. During her PhD studies at the University of Minnesota, she started to research the psychological processes that help people to maintain healthy behaviours overtime. “A big issue is that people start to engage in healthy behaviors, but shortly afterwards, they stop… so how can we help maintain these behaviours overtime?” One promising notion, she highlights, is the idea of habits; habits are automatic impulses to perform a behavior that are triggered by a stable cue in the environment and their enactment doesn’t require attention. Burns plans to explore habits in relation to physical activity. For example, she asks “Which type of people are most likely to develop strong habits for going to the [ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´] Athletic Centre?” Understanding habit formation and function could help people maintain healthy behaviors overtime. “If we understand these processes, we can leverage them over time… we can shape interventions for diabetes or heart disease and help people live healthier lives.”

Maintaining healthy behaviours and pursing health goals are also a primary interest of Dr. Marina Milyavskaya. Specifically, Milyavskaya considers why people are successful in pursuing certain goals, but not others, as well as how this translates to day-to-day goal pursuit. After an inspiring motivational psychology class during her undergrad at McGill, Milyavskaya knew she wanted to pursue a graduate degree that focused on goals and self-regulation. After completing a Clinical Psychology degree, she realized her stronger interests are in research, and sought a post-doc at the University of Toronto researching self-control and temptations.

In her research, Milyavskaya discovered that self-control didn’t seem to matter as much as temptation. “If the goal is to eat healthy, what matters is the frequency of exposure to temptations—so don’t have chocolate in the house!” Milyavskaya has been at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ since July 2015, and uses methods from social cognition, personality psychology, ecological momentary assessment, and advanced statistical modelling to better understand the mechanisms of goal pursuit, as well as strategies and interventions that can be used to better attain personal goals. Milyavskaya embraces the translation of research to those who can use it, having previously written blog-style articles explaining her research findings to lay people. In addition, she highlights the importance for researchers within the University to know what research is happening across campus, and if there is potential for new collaborations. “The Brown Bag Series is trying to bring that community [of health researchers] together.”

The Brown Bag Series will run the second Friday of every month, and will invite health researcher speakers from across campus, their research partners, or potential partners conducting relevant research in the region. Anyone who is interested in health research across campus is invited to come.  And anyone interested in presenting a talk to get interdisciplinary feedback should get in touch with one of the organizers to get onto the schedule. Stay tuned at the CHAIM centre website and follow us on twitter to keep informed on the Brown Bag Series!

Related Resources:

By Angela Paric, Department of Neuroscience, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University 

This past March, a novel music program began at Elizabeth Bruyère Hospital in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. Several individuals living with dementia and their caregivers gather each week to make music, reminiscence about the past, and connect with others. Currently in week seven of eight, Music Matters has evolved into so much more than anyone had expected. Old friends were reunited, favourite memories were recounted, original poetry and songs were composed, and impromptu dance solos soon followed. And as if this wasn’t enough, participants will  at the National Arts Centre.

Music Matters is coordinated by Dr. Tracy Luciani, who works at Bruyère Continuing Care and is President of Artswell, a registered charity dedicated to improving the quality of life and well-being of individuals living with the effects of age, illness or injury. New tunes, vocal exercises, and guitar are arranged by Julia Churchill, a jazz musician and improviser, also from Artswell. She is joined by Dr. Jesse Stewart, a Juno award-winning music professor at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University whose percussive skills keep the program going at a steady beat. Together with filmmakers Christopher Rohde and Kenneth Warner, they will create a documentary to commemorate and showcase the music-making process. And just when the level of collaboration seemed to have reached a peak, another set of enthusiasts joined the team. The health benefits of Music Matters are also being more formally evaluated by ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University health sciences professor Dr. Renate Ysseldyk and students Noah Latchem, Anita Sengupta, and Angela Paric. Through a series of short surveys, open-ended interview questions, and observational measures, both the group identity and the individual health benefits of Music Matters will be captured. It has been a seamless collaboration that appears to have both intrigued and benefitted the participants.

Music-making has become increasingly recognized as a cognitively demanding process that may be beneficial to brain functioning, and as such could be particularly useful in slowing cognitive decline amongst healthy, older individuals as well as those with age-related diseases such as dementia (Herholz & Zatorre, 2012; Thompson & Schlaug, 2015). Moreover, the social element inherent in music-making as a group has also been found to foster emotional regulation, social connectedness, and improved health (Dingle, Brander, Ballantyne, & Baker, 2013). With this in mind, the musicians experimented with various instruments and exercises to enhance the program and encourage socialization. During the first week, participants used an assortment of percussive tools to intensify Dr. Stewart’s hand drumming. A few weeks later, the calls of loons and chickadees emanated from a peculiar looking collection of instruments, that in concert with finger tapping and mouthed “whooshes”, filled the room with sounds of oceanside walks and rainy spring afternoons. It was a chance for everyone’s inner goof to take centre stage.

This shared musical experience also conjured fond memories and the program quickly became the grounds for storytelling. Reflections on the past and present provided the lyrical basis for a new group song that will be featured during the final performance. And on one special afternoon, a 90-year old participant living with dementia recited an original poem that captivated the audience. While she spoke, emotions became increasingly palpable and an important theme emerged. Individuals living with dementia should be embraced for who they are and who they can still become, rather than noticed for what they have lost. The Music Matters group is a community where memories, ideas, personalities, and individual quirks are all welcome with arms wide open. It is our hope that Music Matters will enhance the health and well-being of each individual living with dementia and their caregivers alike, one song at a time.

Please join us on May 1^st at 2pm to celebrate Music Matters’ wonderful accomplishments!

Tickets can be purchased via the 

This project was also led in partnership with Alzheimer’s Society of Ottawa and Renfrew County and funded by the Community Foundation of Ottawa.

Poems By SH

Arms Wide Open

When you were young

My hugs were just a token

You were strong and loved me back

My arms were wide open

Now I feel like a child

I’m not always coping

Please embrace me, hold me tight

My arms are wide open

I don’t mean to always call

I’m serious; no joking

Have I become a nuisance?

Are your arms still wide open?

I’m so grateful for your love

I cannot hold it in

Have patience with my failings

With your arms wide open

I’m Lost For Words

It’s on the tip of my tongue

It was there just a minute ago

When I lose a word

I wonder if it will ever come back

You will have to be patient

Just give me a minute

I know what I want to say

I’m just lost for words

Some days my thoughts

Are like wisps of smoke

Disappearing into thin air

Never to be seen again

I understand what you are saying

You make sense to me

Will you fill in my blanks?

I’m feeling lost for words

There are three words

I remember still; ‘I-love-you’

And if the day comes when I am silent

Remember what I say today

References:
Dingle GA, Brander C, Ballantyne J, Baker FA (2013) ‘To be heard’: The social and mental health benefits of choir singing for disadvantaged adults. Psychol Music 41(4):405-421.

Herholz SC, Zatorre RJ (2012) Musical Training as a Framework for Brain Plasticity: Behavior, Function, and Structure. Neuron 76(3):486-502.

Thompson WF, Schlaug G (2015) The Healing Power of Music. Sci Am 26:32-41.