Updates

A team of researchers led by Children’s Health Policy Centre scholars Kimberly Thomson and Nicole Catherine has received a 2024 Convening and Collaborating (C2) Award from Michael Smith Health Research BC. The award funding will help the research team improve the evaluation of upstream public health interventions in British Columbia.

Public health interventions are more effective when they address the bigger picture of people’s lives — the social conditions in which they are born, live, and age. These “upstream” interventions aim to tackle the root causes of health problems, addressing systemic inequities that traditional healthcare approaches may overlook. But the impacts of these interventions can be difficult to measure.

Thomson and Catherine will address this challenge by facilitating a series of conversations between policymakers, researchers and health practitioners. Through online consultations and an in-person Thought Exchange event, they will bring together researchers and research users to discuss the evaluation of upstream public health projects in BC.

The goal of these conversations is to help participants:

• better understand current evaluation methods
• identify opportunities for coordination between public health researchers and institutions
• improve innovation and evaluation capacity
• set future research priorities

“We’re really excited to have these rich discussions with our public health partners,” said Thomson. “It’s a great opportunity to shape our collaborative research priorities, including for upcoming child health policy initiatives in BC that we’ll be measuring and monitoring.”

The C2 Award supports researchers in British Columbia who are working collaboratively to address public health challenges. More information about the project and the award can be found on the Michael Smith Health Research BC website.

A recent report by the Children’s Health Policy Centre found that home visiting programs can have significant benefits for mothers and children facing adversity.

The report looked at randomized controlled trial evaluations of 13 home visiting programs across Canada, the U.S. and other high-income jurisdictions to investigate the effectiveness of these programs. Seven intensive programs based on the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) model demonstrated particularly robust benefits.

The benefits for children included:

• reduced prenatal substance exposure
• improved language
• improved cognitive development
• better mental health
• better school readiness and reading
• fewer injuries or maltreatment concerns

Benefits for mothers included:

• better social supports
• greater self-efficacy
• fewer subsequent pregnancies
• increased breastfeeding duration
• better mental health
• improved parenting
• improved socioeconomic status
• reduced exposure to intimate partner violence

NFP is an early intervention where nurses visit girls and women through pregnancy and their child’s early years. Nurses explore topics such as healthy pregnancy, parenting skills, healthy relationships and child development.

The report also identified six other home visiting programs that benefitted children and mothers. However, these programs had fewer positive outcomes than the NFP-based programs due to shorter durations, later interventions and the varied skill levels of providers.

These findings provide critical evidence that policymakers in British Columbia can use to build on the success of existing programs, develop new intervention strategies and ensure that children and mothers flourish.

To learn more, read the full report.

Social supports may be universally beneficial for adolescents, according to a paper recently published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Written by researchers including Kim Thomson, an assistant professor of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a CHPC team member, the paper tracked the emotional health of immigrant, refugee and non-immigrant early adolescents in British Columbia.

The study found that immigrant and refugee adolescents across 10 school districts started Grade 4 with poorer emotional health than their peers, highlighting the need for culturally responsive supports for these students. From Grades 4 to 7, both immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents experienced a decline in their emotional health.

However, first-generation refugees were a notable exception — they reported feeling more satisfied with life over the same time.

Despite the differences in emotional health between the groups, Thomson and her co-authors “did not find differences in the associations between improvements in emotional health and improvements in social support by immigration group.” This indicates that social supports may benefit all adolescents regardless of their immigration backgrounds.

“These results highlight social support as a modifiable factor within schools that can promote young people’s emotional health,” the study concluded.

To learn more, read the full paper.

A prevention program for Grade 7 students could help end the opioid crisis, according to a recent article by the team from the Children’s Health Policy Centre.

Published in The Conversation, the article is based on research findings about school-based primary prevention interventions over the last 20 years.

“Many of Canada’s responses to the opioid crisis still focus downstream on adults, after problems have started or become entrenched,” the article said. “In contrast, primary prevention operates upstream in childhood — before most young people start engaging in substance use, misuse or experimentation.”

The two most promising school-based programs are: Strengthening Families and Project PATHS, and they have been tested in the US and Hong Kong. Both led to significant reductions in opioid use by young people, including over long-term follow-up.

The two programs have another feature adding to their appeal for delivery in Canada, according to the authors. Training for facilitators is very brief — only two days for Strengthening Families and three days for Project PATHS.

“The short training time also helps reduce delivery costs, further increasing the appeal for policy-makers and school administrators,” the article said.

In concluding, the authors noted that the federal government has committed more than a billion dollars since 2017 to address the toxic drug problem — paralleled by provincial and territorial funding. “But a policy shift towards meaningful prevention also requires tackling the realities of current Canadian health spending priorities,” they said.

“Only 6.1% of health spending in 2023 went towards public health including prevention, a longstanding pattern. So concerted, coordinated and collaborative efforts are needed within and across every policy level and jurisdiction.”

So new prevention efforts are badly needed to tackle the opioid crisis in Canada — thereby ensuring that many more children do not go on to experience avoidable harms.

Read the full article here.