We are thrilled to welcome 14 new students to our 2021 CHILD-BRIGHT Summer Studentship Program!
Every year, CHILD-BRIGHT helps train a new cohort of students in patient-oriented research (POR) by supporting our project and program teams as they hire students for the summer. For the 2021 offering, we earmarked over $50,000 to support these students, who will be working with eight of our research project teams.
Meet this summer’s cohort:
PARENT-EPIQ
Amarpreet will be cleaning and analyzing data collected from Parent-EPIQ’s questionnaire, which was sent to parents of children born very preterm and other key stakeholders to help answer the question: “What early childhood outcome measures are meaningful to parents of children born very preterm?” With assistance from the research team and statistician, Amarpreet will then analyze the results and write an abstract.
As a member of the Cerebral Palsy (CP) Discovery Lab, Rachel will focus on data collected from previous intensive two-week camps investigating the use of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) paired with constraint therapy in children with Hemiplegic CP to improve hand function. She will be involved in data cleaning and statistical analysis in order to contribute to a peer-reviewed manuscript.
Deena and Isobel will focus on a substudy within PIUO to describe the characteristics of children with neurological impairment presenting with neuroirritability requiring hospitalization at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, respectively, and to describe the clinical care they receive. Matthew will plan, conduct and complete a literature search providing evidence for the prevalence of patient-partners in pediatric health literature, specifically as co-authors with accreditation for research publications.
Strongest Families ND
Ting will help establish a Knowledge Translation (KT) plan and study for the survey results of the Life Beyond Trauma research study. At the end of the study, Ting will analyze the data of the KT study and will write a manuscript for publication in an academic journal.
This summer, Sarah, Claire, and Antonina will be responsible for data collection and information extraction to be included in the Jooay App, as well as data entry and data analysis using app analytics. They will also support a number of key knowledge translation activities related to the Jooay App.
Mega Team
Shi Ping and Eisha will learn how to conduct research study visits, gather consent from participants, as well as interact with study participants and families. They will also learn about methods and processes of data collection and the importance of incorporating patient-partners in the research study.
CCENT
Laura will complete a chart review of NICU admissions at Mount Sinai for one calendar year, to identify medical indicators of high-risk infants. She will conduct data analysis to identify potential early signs—from the child’s time in the NICU—that could help predict if a child will need to be referred to the complex care program, and if so, to help identify the opportune time for when these referrals should be made. She will summarize the findings in a manuscript. Meanwhile, Clara will focus on data analysis and visualization as well as assist with a meta-analysis of CCENT’s 16 measures administered over an 18-month period to capture outcomes such as stress, mental health, and experience of care delivery.
ReadyOrNot
Claire will conduct a review to identify key issues and policies that need to be improved relative to the health care transition of youth from the pediatric to adult care settings. She will also work with the project team’s Patient and Family Advisory Group (PFAC) to develop skills in patient-oriented research. She will take on a leadership role within this group, where she will co-facilitate meetings, prepare materials, consolidate discussion questions, and incorporate feedback from the PFAC into the team’s work.
As part of the program, the summer students start by completing the Patient-Oriented Research Curriculum In Child Health (PORCCH), a series of free online training modules, co-funded by CHILD-BRIGHT, to learn about the basics of POR. PORCCH is designed to build knowledge and skills for authentic patient-oriented research in child health.
The students are then engaged in a mix of live and asynchronous learning sessions, with a new resource or activity introduced every week. CHILD-BRIGHT patient-partner Kent Cadogan Loftsgard will be returning this year to facilitate a webinar in which he will share some of his insights about effective patient engagement in the research process.
This year, the students will also be working in groups to write a plain-language summary of a research article published by a CHILD-BRIGHT researcher. Not only will the students be able to practice their scientific communication skills, but the end result will be lay-friendly article summaries that will be published in CHILD-BRIGHT’s forthcoming KT Library, where they will be available to researchers, policy makers, patients, and families.
Stay tuned to read these lay summaries at the end of the summer! In the meantime, to see more of our CHILD-BRIGHT youth in action, watch the recording of our latest webinar: Diversity, Accessibility, & Accommodation Considerations in Patient-Oriented Research with Youth.