Announcing the Winners of our 2021 Knowledge Translation Innovation Incubator Grant Competition!

 We are pleased to announce the two winning teams of our 2021 CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator competition: the Let’s go to the Library team and the CommuniKIDS team. Read more about each team below.

What is Let’s go to the Library?

The Let’s go to the Library team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to create a digital library containing a series of brief storybooks on different sexuality topics for pre-teens to read alone or with their parents. Youth interviews, child-generated art, and inclusive images will be used throughout the storybooks to promote engagement. Content will be underpinned by the Ontario sexual education curriculum and disability-specific guidelines.

More specifically, the team will:  

• Gather information from target sources and organize it into key themes/topic areas

• Design and develop the storybooks in collaboration with stakeholders, a graphic designer, and a videographer

• Host the storybook on an existing hospital website for easy access to the resources.

Meet the team:

Let’s go to the Library is led by Amy McPherson (Senior Scientist at Bloorview Research Institute and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto) and Christine Provvidenza (Knowledge Translation Lead, Evidence to Care at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital).

Other project team members include:

• Alison Engel-Yan (Parent collaborator, passionate advocate for increasing access to sexuality-related resources for children with disabilities and member of the Family Leadership Program at Holland Bloorview)

• Nelson Ainsley and Makumbu Lumbu (Lived experience collaborators)

• Amanda Landry and Charise MacDonald (Occupational therapists at Holland Bloorview)

• Lindsay King (Social worker at Niagara Children’s Hospital)

• Madison Giles (PhD trainee and research assistant)

• Jennie Williams (Enhance the UK, dissemination partner).

What is CommuniKIDS?

The CommuniKIDS team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to develop a freely-accessible bilingual trial results communication tool (“CommuniKIDS”) in collaboration with youth and families impacted by different forms of child disability.

More specifically, the project will:

• Work with youth and families to determine what their specific informational needs and preferences are for receiving trial results, including what to communicate (i.e., content), by whom, how, and when this information should be communicated

• Hold workshops with youth and families with lived experience of rare genetic disorders associated with child disability to answer these questions and to co-develop guidance and templates for researchers to use for sharing pediatric trial results with participants

• Obtain and incorporate feedback on CommuniKIDS from trialists and Clinical Trials Ontario (CTO), making sure CommuniKIDS is acceptable for use by researchers and research ethics boards.

Meet the team:

The CommuniKIDS project is led by:

• Nancy Butcher (child health researcher, INFORM-RARE trial methodologist at the Hospital for Sick Children, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto)

• Beth Potter (epidemiologist and Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa)

• Dawn Richards (Director of Patient and Public Engagement, CTO, who co-led the development of CTO’s trial results tool)

• Maureen Smith (experienced patient engagement leader and advocate)

• Nicole Pallone (patient-partner and parent of a child with a rare metabolic disease)

• Shelley Vanderhout (registered dietitian and post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Ottawa)

• Martin Offringa (neonatologist, child health researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children, and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto)

• Ami Baba (Clinical Research Project Manager at SickKids).

Congratulations to both winning teams!

We would also like to thank all the applicants of our CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator grant competition as well as our review panel, which was composed of parents, researchers, clinicians, educators, trainees, and youth with expertise in KT research, childhood disability research, occupational therapy, mental health services, communications, and advocacy.

Announcing the Winners of our 2020 Knowledge Translation Innovation Incubator Grant Competition!

We are pleased to announce the two winning teams of our 2020 CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator competition: the WeeWheel team and the Perspectives of Mental Health team. Read more about each team below. 

What is WeeWheel? 

The WeeWheel team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to address the evidence-practice gap in wheelchair skills training among pediatric manual wheelchair users at the Marie Enfant Rehabilitation Centre (CRME) and two affiliated specialized schools: École Joseph-Charbonneau (ÉJC) and École Victor-Doré (ÉVD).

More specifically, the team will: 

• Develop and adapt Wheelchair Skills Training Program (WSTP) educational resources for children, for example, through the creation of a training workbook, instructional posters, and a storybook. These resources will be complementary to one another, for example, by using the same characters. They will be engaging and geared to the needs and preferences of the children who use them. 

• Share these resources, most particularly with local ‘knowledge users’ which in this case are the occupational therapists at all three sites and the wheelchair users they work with.

The main messages that are communicated are:

1. Paediatric wheelchair users can learn new wheelchair skills

2. Wheelchair training using the new educational resources can be both effective and fun for children

By developing and sharing these resources, the team aims to generate awareness and interest in the training program, share knowledge with a broader range of people,  and facilitate practice change in order to inform future efforts to implement the training program in appropriate settings. 

Meet the team: 

The WeeWheel project is led by Paula Rushton (Associate Professor, Université de Montréal), Krista Best (Assistant Professor, Université Laval), Lee Kirby (Physiatrist and Professor, Dalhousie University) and François Routhier (Associate Professor, Université Laval). 

The team also includes:

• Decision-maker and knowledge users Claude Nadeau (Manager of the Seating and Mobility Program at CRME) and Dominique Héroux (Manager of School-Based Rehabilitation at the specialized schools affiliated with CRME); 

• Practitioner and knowledge users  Cindy Rice (Occupational Therapist and Clinical Coordinator of the Seating and Mobility Program at CRME) and Tatiana Dib (Occupational Therapist at CRME and WSTP expert); 

• A Knowledge Translation expert, Melanie Barwick (Senior Scientist, SickKids Research Institute and Professor, University of Toronto) and an expert in pediatric rehabilitation and wheelchair user, Maxime Robert, (Assistant Professor, Université Laval). The team will also integrate four professional master’s students of occupational therapy: Emma Lafleur, Andrée-Anne Côté, Laurence Fortin-Haines and Isabelle Paré, for whom this project will serve as their research project requirement for their occupational therapy degree.

What is the Perspectives of Mental Health project? 

The Perspectives of Mental Health team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to include the voices of youth with neurodevelopmental disorders in mental health discussions and to create strategies and materials that can facilitate more dialogue between youth and healthcare providers. 

More specifically, the team will: 

• Work with youth with neurodevelopmental disorders to create digital stories to share their thoughts on how they would like healthcare providers to talk to them about their mental health. Digital stories will be shared with researchers and healthcare providers across, and beyond the POND Network.

• Evaluate the impact of these stories.

This project aims to develop a KT product that includes youth voices from a range of neurodevelopmental disorders including youth with autism, ADHD, OCD, and intellectual disability, which has the potential for short-term and long-term impact. Including youth with neurodevelopmental disorders in the design of resources for healthcare providers moves this project beyond traditional KT efforts often led by healthcare providers to inform youth. The digital stories created by youth with neurodevelopmental disorders will feature voices that have not always been included in research, and for that reason, have a better chance of changing healthcare practice. This study will also develop insights on how digital storytelling can potentially be used as a novel KT tool among youth with neurodevelopmental disorders. Building on the team’s previous experience using digital storytelling, this project has the potential of also making an innovative methodological contribution to the field of qualitative methodology. 

Meet the team here: 

The Perspectives of Mental Health project is led by Patrick Jachyra (post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health), Yona Lunsky (psychologist and member of the POND Network which is a research network focused on improving care and long-term outcomes for children with neurodevelopmental disorders), Windemere Jarvis (knowledge broker for POND), Cathy Gaboury (parent and POND participant advisors), Sheldon Gaboury (youth and POND participant advisors), Noah Barnett (Director of the POND Youth Council and POND participant advisors), Austin Cosgrove (youth and POND participant advisors), Claudine Evangelista (parent, teacher, librarian, and POND participant advisors), Evdokia Anagnostou (Principal Investigator of the POND Network and pediatric neurologist).

Congratulations to both winning teams! 

We would also like to thank all the applicants of our third CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator grant competition as well as our review panel, which was composed of parents, researchers, clinicians, educators, trainees, and youth with expertise in KT research, childhood disability research, occupational therapy, mental health services, communications, and advocacy. 

Announcing the Winners of our 2019 KT Innovation Incubator Competition

We are pleased to announce the two winning teams of our 2019 CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator competition: the Making Sense of Connectedness team and the Ready 2 Work team. Read more about both teams below.

The Making Sense of Connectedness project is led by Natalie Miyake (Autism Advocate/Parent, West Island Association for the Intellectually Handicapped), Dr. Melissa Park (Principal Investigator, Participatory Research / School of Physical & Occupational Therapy at McGill University), Caitlin Bard (Autism Advocate/Student), Lyne Charlebois (Executive Director of West Island Association for the Intellectually Handicapped), Anabel Sinn (Principal Designer, Connected Narratives) and Casey Vormer (Autism Advocate/Artist, Project Coordinator).  

Meet the team here:

Natalie Miyake

Dr. Melissa Park

Caitlin Bard

Anabel Sinn

Casey Vormer

What is Making Sense of Connectedness?

The Making Sense of Connectedness team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to give neurodiverse children and youth, as well as their families, the opportunity to build an online hub of sensory environments in Montreal to engage the public about the impact of these sensory spaces on the learning, health, and well-being of neurodiverse children and their families.

More specifically, the team will:

• Place children/youth on the autism spectrum and their families at the centre of the project to co-create initiatives that will change everyday sensory spaces based on their experiential knowledge

• Collaborate with children/youth on the spectrum to represent messages and important themes, which will be accessed on the online platform

• Use ethnographic methods (e.g., photographs, mini-films, stories, fieldnotes of participant observations) to document the process of engaging the public, co-designing and evaluating initiatives.

This is an innovative project that aims to modify sensory environments in health care and commercial settings and that will be co-led by people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and family members of children/youth with brain-based developmental disabilities. They will document the process through ethnographic methods to better record their different approaches at engaging the public in collaboratively creating and implementing child and youth-led initiatives to help create these neurodiverse-friendly environments.

““Our work as part of the Making Sense of Connectedness project will transform the ways in which we respond to and collaboratively take action led by the experiential knowledge of neurodiverse children and youth. Our project is about potentiality and we are thrilled that CHILD-BRIGHT both understands and stands behind the potentiality of citizen engagement.” ”

— Melissa Park, Principal Investigator

This team’s partnership was established in April 2015 when Dr. Melissa Park and Natalie Miyake (Former Board Member of West Island Association for the Intellectually Handicapped) met with families with children diagnosed with autism. The participatory research project at the time provided children and their families an opportunity to take photos and videos of places where they experienced social inclusion/exclusion, with particular emphasis on sensory supports and barriers in those spaces. The team has since grown to include more autism advocates and artists to support the infrastructure for photographs, mini-films and stories of neurodiverse children and youth. 

The grant was funded by a McGill Social Sciences & Humanities Development Grant 2014 Making sense of social inclusion: An exploratory photo-ethnographic and participatory study of the experiences of children with autism and their families in the community. Our aim was to understand the sensory experiences of children diagnosed with autism and their families in public spaces; and how they make sense of, and develop strategies to promote, experiences of social-spatial inclusion.

The Ready 2 Work project is led by Dr. Priscilla Burnham Riosa (Principal Investigator, Department of Applied Disability Studies at Brock University), Lisa Whittingham (PhD Student), Courtney Bishop (PhD Student), Nickolas Kenyeres (Technology Specialist), Dr. Briano De Rezze (Collaborator, School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University), Dr. Wendy Roberts (Collaborator, Integrated Services for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders) and Neil Walker (York ASD Partnership Project Liaison/Coordinator).   

Meet the team here:

Dr. Priscilla Burnham Riosa

Lisa Whittingham

Courtney Bishop

Nickolas Kenyeres

Dr. Briano De Rezze

Dr. Wendy Roberts

Neil Walker

What is Ready 2 Work?

The Ready 2 Work team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to develop and pilot an online vocational/employment readiness platform alongside self-advocates with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), their families, and professionals who operate vocational programs for people with ASD.

More specifically, the team will:

• Conduct focus groups with key stakeholders (people with ASD, their families, and program leaders from relevant vocational/employment organizations) about the needs of job seekers with ASD

• Develop and test the online platform with ongoing feedback from key stakeholders to ensure that the hub stays relevant for end users

• Pilot the finalized platform with end users both involved and not involved in the previous project phases to evaluate the overall experience and perceived utility of the tool.

The project is motivated by both the importance of vocational and employment success among people with ASD and by the shortage of existing tools that currently support people with ASD to market their skills to potential employers. This ‘gateway to employment’ platform will provide tools to individualize employment readiness that can lead to concrete deliverables (e.g., customized resume, mentor connection) that would be helpful in beginning or continuing their vocational/employment search.   

““This end user-developed online portal may have far-reaching implications for helping people with ASD become better equipped to enter the workforce. Meaningful employment not only benefits end users but may have positive societal benefits to the broader community.” ”

— Ready 2 Work Team

The CHILD-BRIGHT KT team, including the members of the KT Advisory Committee, will also conduct a case study about innovation in knowledge translation and propose an appropriate evaluation framework for the Making Sense of Connectedness and Ready 2 Work teams.

Congratulations to both winning teams for these highly innovative projects!

We would also like to thank all the applicants of our second CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator grant competition as well as our review panel, which was composed of parents, researchers, clinicians, educators, trainees, and youth with expertise in KT research, childhood disability research, occupational therapy, mental health services, communications, and advocacy.

Announcing the winner of our first KT Innovation Incubator grant competition!

We are pleased to announce the winner of the CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator:

Child-Sized KT

The Child-Sized KT project is led by Dr. Shazhan Amed, Stephanie Glegg, Rosa Livingstone, Dr. Ian Pike, Dr. Elodie Portales-Casamar, John Jacob and Dawn Mount. Meet the team here:

Dr. Shazhan Amed

Stephanie Glegg

Rosa Livingstone

Dr. Ian Pike

Dr. Portales-Casamar

John Jacob

Dawn Mount

What is Child-Sized KT?

The Child-Sized KT team will use the KT Innovation Incubator grant to develop an online platform that will provide opportunities for youth and families to actively participate as partners in research, from developing the question, to designing the study, to sharing new knowledge.

More specifically, the Child-Sized KT team will:

• Document child and family partner stories about the value of research engagement

• Gather feedback from children and their families, and assess the usefulness of the stories in motivating child and family research engagement

• Co-design an online family portal for the Child-Sized KT platform that uses these stories and gaming features (e.g. point scoring, badges, missions, communities) to motivate children and families to learn about health research, why their involvement is important, and how to access research opportunities.

This portal will be innovative in its use of gamification (i.e. elements of game playing to improve engagement) to motivate children and families to learn about the benefits and logistics of research involvement. The portal will offer an alternative to lengthy written materials, in-person workshops and online learning on patient-oriented research and serve those without previous intention to engage in research.

The CHILD-BRIGHT KT team, including the expertise of the KT Advisory Committee, will also conduct a case study about innovation in knowledge translation and propose an appropriate evaluation framework for the Child-Sized KT team.

“Child-Sized KT will transform the way we engage children, youth, and their caregivers in the research, making our research at BC Children’s Hospital and Sunny Hill more responsive, relevant and meaningful to the patients we serve. We are thrilled to receive this support from CHILD-BRIGHT which will galvanize our efforts in creating a fun, engaging, and easily accessible platform for patients and families.”

— Dr. Shazhan Amed

The Child-Sized KT team was established two years ago as a collaboration of researchers and clinician-scientists at BC Children’s Hospital (BCCH) interested in advancing knowledge translation (KT) in pediatrics. All aspects of Child-Sized KT up until now have occurred in partnerships with children and families, researchers and health professionals, so that it truly meets the needs of its end-users. Through their family partner (Rosa Livingstone) and co-PI (Stephanie Glegg), they are focused on engaging children with brain-based disabilities and their families, giving them an opportunity to inform the development of Child-Sized KT.

Congratulations to the Child-Sized KT team, and we would like to thank all of our applicants to our very first CHILD-BRIGHT KT Innovation Incubator grant competition as well as our review panel, which was composed of parents, researchers, clinicians, educators, trainees, and youth with expertise in KT research, childhood disability research, occupational therapy, mental health services, communications, and advocacy, who had the difficult task of selecting only one winning project out of the 15 submissions.