Community health and epidemiology professor Dr. Cory Neudorf and adjunct professor Thilina Bandara, along with Charles Plante, Houston Family Research Fellow at the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy will collect and analyze community safety policies and programs adopted by medical health officers at 200 local health units across Canada in response to COVID-19. The goal is to recommend best practices for responses to future waves of COVID-19 or other pandemics.
"To capture front-line perspectives on COVID-19 responses, the intended and unintended consequences of the interventions, and local COVID-19 disease trends from public health staff themselves, we will leverage our longstanding relationships with the Urban Public Health Network, the Public Health Physicians of Canada, and the Rural, Remote and Northern Public Health Network," said Neudorf.
Neudorf's team will be the first in the world to track public health responses to an active pandemic using a new tool the World Health Organization is developing for standardized reporting and analysis of health interventions.
USask researchers Maureen Anderson and Oluwafem Oluwole are also co-applicants on the project, while researchers from McGill University, Dalhousie University, and University of Calgary will be involved.
This funding was announced earlier today, as part of a $900,000 investment by CIHR in USask medical research to help strengthen Canada's rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed more than 450,000 people worldwide.
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For more information, contact:
Victoria Dinh
USask Media Relations
306-966-5487
victoria.dinh@usask.ca