Connecting with Evidence
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
7:30 -8:15
Format
Networking Breakfast (optional)
Learning Objectives
- Learn about the Population Health Intervention Research Network (PHIRNET) and its contributing universities
- Network with colleagues
- Eat, discuss, and enjoy!
Description
Start the day out right with this informal breakfast meeting. This session, held over breakfast, will allow participants to learn more about the specific projects being carried out by PHIRNET researchers. This will be an opportunity to speak to the researchers about ongoing and innovating work in the area of public health intervention research.
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8:30 - 9:45
Format
Plenary session
Speakers
Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa
Albert Marshall, Eskasoni First Nation
Facilitator: Allan Ronald, University of Manitoba
Description
Part 1
In this session, Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault will discuss the different range of approaches to public and population health research drawing from her experience as Scientific Director of the newly established Population Health Improvement Research Network in Ontario. She will review:
- the different types of research questions and methodological approaches to key public and population health issues,
- the different types of data or evidence (both qualitative and quantitative) that bear upon these questions,
- how one goes about finding data or evidence (empirically or drawing upon existing datasets), and
- how one then translates this evidence to different stakeholders in the community and policy worlds.
Part 2
Two-Eyed Seeing
Elder Albert Marshall of the Mi'kmaq Nation will speak from the heart in sharing his wisdom and understandings of Traditional Mi'kmaq Knowledge. He says: "Knowledge is spirit, a gift passed on through many people. We use it for a while. It is living and we are the conduit. It is not ours to keep. We've got to pass it on. In sharing, I am living up to the responsibility of why I was given that knowledge and I am ever mindful that I am an individual within the collective of the community. Foremost in Mi'kmaq understandings is that our language (like other Aboriginal languages in Canada) teaches us that everything is both physical and spiritual. I am thus very cognizant at all times of the fact that I have to make sure that my actions today do not compromise the opportunities and abilities of the next Seven Generations to live in harmony with their natural world. My consciousness is constantly being challenged with the physical part and the guiding principle of spirit which creates a sense of balance.
Elders are not sure that this message is getting out there (to youth, but also to many others) of how to go forward in this world. It needs to be heard and enacted as “Two-Eyed Seeing” wherein we learn to see from one eye with the best in our Aboriginal ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the best in the Western (or mainstream) ways of knowing … and we need to learn to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all.
The notion of “Two-Eyed Seeing” is very simple but effective, albeit hard to convey to an academic audience as it does not fit into any particular subject area or discipline. It is about life … what you do, what kind of responsibilities you have … not putting yourself above or below … knowing that you are part and parcel of the whole. “Two-Eyed Seeing” will enable us to walk and talk together, accepting diverse styles of evidence. For example, we will see that we are not merely objects to be measured but also subjects with living experience, and we will see that to prove may be desirable and skepticism a virtue but also that to know is OK and trust is a gift, and we will see that social can be more than humans such that my community of relations includes rocks, plants, animals, clouds, and beyond."
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10:00 - 12:00
Workshop
Learning Objectives
- Develop a dialogue between PHIRNET and NCCPH Summer Institute's participants around the notion of Evidence
- Provide highly interactive and interdisciplinary sessions with a facilitated question period with the audience
- Emphasize case studies and HOW TO competency
There will be three simultaneous workshops presented by PHIRNET and the NCCPH:
Speakers
NCCPH Speakers: Albert Marshall, Eskasoni First Nation
Margo Greenwood, National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health
PHIIRNET Speaker: Alan Katz, University of Manitoba
Facilitator: Margaret Fast, National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases
Speakers
NCCPH Speaker: François-Pierre Gauvin, National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy
PHIRNET Speaker: Dawn Smith, University of Ottawa
Facilitator: François Benoit, National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy
Speakers
NCCPH Speaker: Donna Ciliska, National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools
PHIRNET Speaker: Melanie Rock, University of Calgary
Facilitator: Louise Potvin, University of Montreal
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12:00 - 13:30
Format
Networking Lunch (optional)
Learning Objectives
- Learn about current projects being undertaken by the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health (NCCs)
- Contribute and inform the work of the NCCs
- Network with colleagues
- Eat, discuss, and enjoy!!
Description
This discussion, held over lunch, will allow participants to learn more about the specific projects being carried out by the NCCs. Tables will be labeled with different projects of interest and will feature 1-2 project leaders or decision-makers in the area. Participants will be join a table of their interest and spend the lunch hour engaging with others. Sample projects might include:
- Small drinking water systems
- Early childhood development
- Ethics in public heath
- Risk communication
- Tools for decision-making
- Frameworks for preventing HIV
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13:30 - 16:30
Format
Workshop
Presenting NCCs
National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health
National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health
Speakers
Verlé Harrop, Senior Scientist, NCCDH
Sarah de Leeuw, Research Associate at NCCAH and Assistant Professor, Northern Medical Program UNBC
Teresa MacInnes, documentary film maker
Learning Objectives
- Participants will come with a deeper understanding of the relationship between the determinant ‘Culture' and its relationship with our general health and well-being
- Discussion and materials generated throughout the workshop will be used by NCCDH and NCCAH to reach out to public health audiences who were not able to attend the SI
- The methodology and materials used in this workshop will be generalized to the remaining eleven determinants
Description
This workshop is part of a national discourse designed to engage front line practitioners in a conversation about the nature and use of the determinants of health in addressing the health and well-being of Canadians. The workshop will start with a panel comprised of an historian, cultural anthropologist, and film maker, tasked with exploring one of the most elusive of the determinants, 'Culture', and its relationship to health and well-being. Subsequent to the panel discussion and question period, workshop participants will be invited to form small groups where they will be given, what the MIT Media Lab refers to as, "an object to think with". These objects d'arts/tools will help participants parse out and reflect on the many faceted dimensions that the determinant 'Culture' affords.
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13:30 - 16:30
Workshop
Presenting NCCs
National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools
Speakers
Donna Ciliska, Scientific Director, NCCMT
Objectives
The workshop will move participants from theory to action by introducing, and then allowing participants to apply, methods and tools designed to support the seven steps of Evidence-Informed Public Health (EIPH).
- To review the seven steps of EIPH
- To provide an overview of specific methods and tools that support EIPH
- To allow participants hands-on time with the various methods and tools
Description
Evidence-informed decision making in public health, a process involving seven key steps, can move from theory to action by applying a variety of methods and tools. Public Health professionals interested in making evidence-informed decisions related to public health programs or policy development will be interested in this hands-on and practical workshop. Participants will be reminded of, or introduced to, the key steps needed to implement EIPH and the model for evidence-informed decision making. Following this review, some of the steps of EIPH will be coupled with a method or tool that can be used by participants to complete the step. Time will be available for participants to review each method or tool and ask questions. Participants will leave the workshop with an action tool kit complete with the model for evidence-informed decision making, NCCMT's EIPH wheel, and a list of online links to methods and tools that support the steps of evidence-informed public health.
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13:30 - 16:30
Format
Workshop
Presenting NCCs
National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy
Speakers
Val Morrison, Research Officer, NCCHPP
Objectives
- Illustrate how even the best-conceived communications products (posters, various public health campaigns, etc.) can be interpreted in radically different ways by their intended audience
- Provide an understanding of the different “moments” of communication and how they affect interpretation
- Provide workshop attendees with the ability to understand how both the construction and the interpretation of messages are “socially located”
Description
Traditional models of communication often assume that the meaning of the message communicated is fixed. That is, assuming that the method of communication is “well constructed,” there is only one possible interpretation of the message. The goal of those communicating the message is thus to find the most efficient way of getting the message to the target audience. Frustrating situations may arise when audiences seem to misinterpret what the sender intended them to understand. Often the solution is to then return to the drawing board and come up with a “better” message. In reality, research has shown that just as the senders of messages are institutionally and socially located (for example, public health actors might speak from a specific institutional location and, as a group, are likely to share certain social characteristics such as class and education) so too are audiences. In other words, audiences are not simply the receivers of messages but are active in interpreting the messages that are sent. In this workshop, we will use one particular approach to media communications (the encoding/decoding model (Hall, 1980) to work through an analysis of several examples of public health communications.
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18:00
Join us for an evening of fun, history and music. We'll embark on our adventure from the Fort Garry Hotel, taking in some of Winnipeg's history while making our way to the King's Head Pub and Eatery in the heart of the Exchange District. Here we will enjoy dinner and drinks in a relaxed social atmosphere. The King's Head is also one of the venues for the Jazz Winnipeg Festival (running from June 25- July 4, 2010), and you will have the opportunity to stay around the area and enjoy some great Jazz with new friends.
Cost: $35 (GST included) Includes tour, dinner and a drink.
For more information:
King's Head Pub and Eatery
Jazz Winnipeg Festival
Destination Winnipeg
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