Research
The Population and Community Health Unit (PCHU) engages in epidemiological, analytical and evaluative research and health data collection. PCHU focuses on a population health approach with a special interest in the communities of London and Southwest Ontario using health prevention and health promotion principles.
Current Projects
Connecting Youth in Custody with Mental Health Services
Principal Investigators: Patricia Erickson, Evelyn Vingilis, Shannon Stewart, Hayley Hamilton
Co-investigators: Paul Wheeler, Sue Bondy, Nathan Kolla, Corine Carlisle.
Funding: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Partnerships for Health Systems Improvement (PHSI) (2013-2018)
Overview: The central purpose is to address the needs of youth with mental health problems, and who are in conflict with the law, through introduction and evaluation of a new, in-depth screening tool, the interRAI Youth Justice Custodial Facilities (YJCF). The evaluation of this intervention will provide the evidence base to formulate the priorities of knowledge users from MCYS, Justice Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care and CAMH. It will provide important new knowledge to aid in the identification of potential mental health problems, including substance use, and allocating scarce resources for mental health needs of youth in the justice system.
At present, MCYS only conducts Stage 1 brief screening of all youth entering custodial institutions, but the YJCF enables a more in-depth Stage 2 assessment for possible disorders of all youth, followed by advancement to Stage 3 care planning based on appropriate clinical assessment protocols where warranted.
A key KT deliverable will be to train and support 30 assessors (clinical staff) working in secure custody facilities on the YJCF to improve: 1) screening of mental health and substance use problems; 2) care planning and 3) access to interventions and treatment of youth in custody (YIC). A process evaluation will be conducted to assess intervention implementation and short and medium outcomes will be evaluated through a prospective, group-randomized, posttest only design. The evaluation will determine whether a higher percentage of YIC show evidence of mental health and/or substance use problems in the YJCF screening intervention arm compared to that obtained from the standard screener, Youth Admission Interview Tool, used in the control arm. Evaluation will also assess whether a higher percentage of YIC of intervention arm received care planning for mental health and substance use services, interventions, treatment and referrals compared to the control arm. A 6 month follow up with MCYS data bases will enable us to determine whether a greater percentage of those in the intervention arm had received treatment than the control arm.
Road Safety Impact of Cannabis Retail Stores
Co-Principal Investigators: Christine Wickens, Evelyn Vingilis
Co-investigators: Robert E Mann, Tara Elton-Marshall, Patricia Di Ciano, Branka Agic, Camila de Souza, André McDonald
Funding: Ministry of Transport of Ontario/Transport Canada Road Safety Research Partnership
Program: (2020-2022)
Overview: Cannabis impaired driving is a concern. Cannabis has been associated with increased crash risk. Estimations of harms and costs of collisions attributable to cannabis in Canadian provinces for 2012 identified 75 fatalities, 4407 injuries and 7794 drivers in property damage collisions for an estimated total cost of $1,094,92,062 (Wettlaufer et al., 2017).
This two year study will bring together an experienced and productive team to undertake three related activities; 1) a systematic review of the effects of cannabis outlet density on collisions and other adverse outcome, 2) development of a database to support analyses of the effects of introducing cannabis retail outlets, and the impact of cannabis retail outlet proximity, on collisions and driving offences, and 3) conduct of preliminary analyses to assess the impact of introduction and proximity of cannabis retail outlets on collisions and driving offences.
We will utilize the database to conduct analyses of the impact of the introduction of cannabis retail stores on collisions, and on the impact of the density of cannabis retail outlets on collisions. The primary outcomes will be collision rates (property damage only collisions, injury collisions and fatality collisions, alcohol-related collisions, drug-related collisions) as affected by introduction of cannabis retail outlets, and density of cannabis retail outlets. We will initially conduct exploratory analyses to examine descriptive statistics on collision measures and other measures by Forward Sortation Area before and after the legalization of cannabis. We will then conduct analyses to assess the changes in collisions over time associated with the legalization of cannabis, the extent to which any changes are associated with location of cannabis retail outlets, and assessing if neighbourhood characteristics moderate the impact of cannabis retail outlet density on collisions.
