Hope Beanlands, NCC for Determinants of Health Lead gave the awards to Jena Webb, Kora DeBeck and Erica Pufall on June 13, 2010 at the CPHA 2010 Opening Ceremony in Toronto (Fabian Besner was unable to attend the conference).

The National Collaborating Centres for Public Health wish to congratulate the four graduate students who received the NCCPH Knowledge Translation Awards. Given for the first time in 2010, these awards recognize the work of graduate students in knowledge translation in public health in Canada.

Here's a brief presentation of the winners and their work:

Fabian Besner
Doctoral student in Community Psychology (Knowledge translation) at L'Université du Québec à Montréal.
He is implementing and evaluating the process of a organization-wide knowledge translation framework with the Institut national de santé publique du Québec, testing and adapting it with two units: the public policy unit and the infectious disease unit. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend the CPHA conference
 
Kora DeBeck
Doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies at University of British Columbia
She coordinates the Urban Health Research Initiative within the British Columbia Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS. She has done a variety of Knowledge Translation projects within this initiative: 35 summaries of research, 2 synthesis documents, meetings with policy-makers and public to disseminate their research. Her work has been referenced 4 times in the House of Commons. She is just starting a series of systematic reviews related to illicit drug use and policy; these will include brief summaries and plain language statements

Erica Pufall
Master's student in Epidemiology at University of Guelph
She's engaging communities in monitoring food safety; working with Inuit hunters in Nain, Nunatsiavut, to test wildlife meat samples for parasites that can be transmitted to humans via food. She interviewed groups within the community (hunters, elders, school teachers) regarding how they would like the information to be presented, distributed. This resulted in an effective and culturally appropriate strategy for dissemination of the findings regarding traditional food safety and public health.

Jena Webb
Doctoral student, Department of Geography, McGill University
Her work focused on environmental contamination of the Upper Amazon in Brazil, and the contaminants in the fish that people eat; she analyzed contaminants found in fish and in hair samples of indigenous people. For the Knowledge Translation aspect, she returned to the communities she studied; engaged the locals in producing theatre and a game for children where the message was to “eat less fish that eat other fish”. A documentary video with accompanying blog has been used to disseminate “upwards” to other health care professionals and policy makers. Although not conducted in Canada, there is definitely a potential for testing the applicability of the strategy to aboriginal peoples in Canada.

The National Collaborating Centres for Public Health salutes the work of excellence of Fabian, Kora, Erica and Jena and wish to thank all those who submitted their candidacy. The Centres invite graduate students to look for next year's application submission process for NCCPH Knowledge Translation Graduate Student Awards, in Spring 2011.