Updates

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Nicole Catherine has been appointed Director of the Children’s Health Policy Centre as of May 1, 2026. Nicole is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU and holds the Canada Research Chair in Child Health Equity and Policy, Tier 2. She has been a member of the Centre’s senior leadership team since 2012.

Nicole leads a program of research centred on understanding how early prevention programs can support children and families who are experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage and on informing public policies to better meet their needs.

Her work builds on her leadership of the BC Healthy Connections Project, a BC-wide randomized controlled trial evaluating an enhanced child health home visiting program. The program involved frequent support visits from public health nurses to expectant mothers and their children throughout pregnancy and early childhood.

Program benefits shown through the trial — including improving child mental health and language and reducing exposure to intimate partner violence by age two years — continue to inform how early prevention programs are being adapted and evaluated locally in Fraser Health Authority and province wide. Nicole is currently the lead investigator or co-investigator on multiple studies designed to help policy leaders ensure effective child health programming.

As an educator, Nicole’s teaching focuses on child wellbeing and public policy. She also collaborates closely with policymakers, public health practitioners, Indigenous scholars and community organizations to ensure that her research is used to inform better services and supports for children and families in BC and beyond.

“I’m excited to grow the Centre’s work and expand its impact in the years ahead,” says Nicole.

“The Centre plays a unique role in advancing child health equity and policy. As Director, I look forward to further strengthening our team and partnerships so that research evidence continues to support policies that help children flourish.”

We also thank Dr. Charlotte Waddell, our Founding Director, for her many contributions to child health research and policy. Charlotte will continue supporting the Centre in the role of Associate Director.

Since founding the Centre in 2007, Charlotte has played an essential role in shaping its mission and profile. With others, she secured millions of dollars in funding to grow the Centre’s work, establishing it as a unique and influential voice in child health policy research in Canada.

Charlotte co-led the BC Healthy Connections Project with Nicole and others. With the Centre team, Charlotte also led the Children’s Mental Health Research Quarterly project (2007–2025). This project provided systematic review evidence summarizing the best available research on children’s mental health prevention and treatment interventions for policymakers and practitioners, along with providing regular policy consultations and public talks. Charlotte also supports the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council’s long-term research project, Hishuk-ish Tsawalk, among other projects.

Nicole embodies our Centre’s focus on improving child wellbeing by producing high-quality research for informing policy and practice. As Charlotte says, “We look forward to the Centre growing and going strong under Nicole’s leadership — doing research that makes a difference in children’s lives.”

A new study reveals that thousands of kids across Canada have experienced parental incarceration — and that number is likely an underestimate.

Developed by a team of researchers from across the country, the CHIRP (Children with IncarceRated Parents) study is the first in Canada to systematically estimate the number of children impacted by parental incarceration. Nicole Catherine, Associate Director of the Children’s Health Policy Centre, was a co-investigator.

The research team identified nearly 170,000 children across five Canadian provinces who experienced parental incarceration between 2015 and 2021. They found that approximately 1 in 100 children (1.2%) per year in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan had been affected.

This study sheds light on a vulnerable population of young people made statistically invisible by a lack of data.

Parental incarceration undermines children’s rights — particularly their rights to family life and to have their best interests upheld. This underscores the need for policies that prioritize children’s best interests, including in sentencing, maintaining parent–child contact, and strengthening supports for affected children.

Parental incarceration is also considered an adverse childhood experience, and research shows that children who experience it tend to have worse mental and physical health than their peers. In order to support these children, policymakers and communities need access to valid data about them.

But prior to this study, there were no credible estimates of the number of children affected by parental incarceration in Canada.

According to the authors, this data gap has hindered “policy and program development, and public, political, and media interest” in these children.

The study stresses that even the statistics used to compile it have limitations, and the findings should be treated as minimum estimates — meaning many more children may be affected.

“While further research is needed to fully quantify the prevalence and burden of this adverse childhood experience, these minimum estimates can be used to raise awareness of the issue of parental incarceration in Canada,” the study concludes.

“Evolving evidence, including this study, is instrumental to advancing work to measure, prevent, and mitigate the harms associated with parental incarceration for children and families.”

Read the full paper to learn more.

Researchers from the Children’s Health Policy Centre (CHPC) have developed an innovative framework to generate early evidence for a made-in-BC childhood health and prevention program.

Designed for the province’s new Enhanced Family Health Program (EFHP), the monitoring and evaluation framework provides guidance to senior leaders on where to invest resources to have the most positive impact on new mothers and their children.

“With any new child-maternal health initiative, it’s crucial to have a monitoring and evaluation system for looking at outcomes and making sure we’re heading in the right direction,” says Nicole Catherine, Children’s Health Policy Centre Associate Director and lead researcher on the project.

“And it’s even better to generate evidence sooner — while waiting for evidence of impact on longer-term child outcomes. That’s what this rapid framework is designed to do.”

The EFHP will be launched this year as a province-wide health promotion and prevention initiative embedded in the public health system.

The EFHP builds on learnings from BC’s previous investments in early prevention, including the BC Healthy Connections Project and Fraser Health’s Enhanced Family Visiting Program. These nurse-home visiting initiatives provide intensive support from pregnancy through early childhood.

Now, the new EFHP will expand supports to hundreds more underserved BC children and mothers each year.

“We were thrilled to collaborate with our partners in the BC Ministry of Health and the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) – Child Health BC and Perinatal Services BC to develop this framework,” says Catherine.

To build the framework, CHPC researchers, along with government and public health leaders, first identified three priority child outcomes for the program: lowered rates of maltreatment, a reduction in mental-health problem behaviour and improved cognitive development by age two years.

“These are crucial early markers of long-term well-being and, as we’ve seen in our research and other published reviews, may respond to interventions like EFHP,” Catherine explains.

Catherine and the CHPC team then identified three early indicators associated with those priority child outcomes. They are now actively partnering with PHSA partners to implement the rapid evaluation framework.

“Our goal was to focus on a few early indicators to generate early evidence, to guide program leaders in adjusting the program as needed and making changes proactively,” she says.

“This approach really suits BC’s EFHP because it makes the most of available resources and will help deliver more effective programs more quickly for children and families.”

Learn more.

At the Children’s Health Policy Centre, we are deeply saddened by the tragic events that occurred recently in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. We share in mourning for those injured and killed — many of them children. We hold the families, students and community of Tumbler Ridge in our thoughts, and with others, we will keep working for a better world for children everywhere.