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SUMMER 2008 |
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Online Only
E d u c a t i o n
Rising Star
Award for grad student
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Submitted Photo |
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Ms. Sylvia Reitmanova |
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Sylvia Reitmanova, a PhD
student in the Division of Community Health and Humanities at Memorial
University’s Faculty of Medicine, is one of five Canadian graduate
students to receive an inaugural Rising Star Award from the Institute of
Health Services and Policy Research, Canadian Institutes of Health
Research.
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Submitted Article |
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Sylvia Reitmanova, a PhD student in
the Division of Community Health and Humanities at Memorial
University’s Faculty of Medicine, is one of five Canadian graduate
students to receive an inaugural Rising Star Award from the
Institute of Health Services and Policy Research, Canadian
Institutes of Health Research.
The awards are given to students studying
in the field of health services and policy research for demonstration of
excellence in research and knowledge translation, the innovation of
their work and the potential impact of their work within the field of
health services and policy research.
This award recognizes Ms. Reitmanova’s
work on increasing policy maker's awareness of local immigrant's mental
health-concerning needs and the barriers they face in accessing health
services in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Her work with immigrants in St. John’s was
done for her master’s degree. From the beginning of her research on
immigrants’ mental health and well-being and the barriers they face
accessing local mental health services, Ms. Reitmanova made contact with
stakeholders such as policy makers, mental health service providers,
Eastern Health and the Association for New Canadians, to find out their
priority issues and research questions. These issues and questions were
then integrated into her research.
After finishing her research, Ms.
Reitmanova went back to these stakeholders and let them know what she
had found. “If you really want research to be taken seriously, you need
to employ different strategies to disseminate it,” she said.
During Mental Health Awareness Week, she
presented her work to mental health and immigration policy makers and
based on this she also prepared two reports. The report on social
determinants of immigrants’ well-being was delivered to the provincial
government's Immigration Office. The report for mental health decision
makers, organizations and services providers was made available via
posting on the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Applied Health
Research website. She also made presentations to mental health service
decision makers and providers at the Waterford Hospital.
Ms. Reitmanova plans to take her
dissemination initiatives one step further by publishing them in local
immigrant newspapers and mailing lists and by offering an in-kind
workshop to a clinic team that provides health services to immigrants.
For the academic community, her research was published in the Journal of
Immigrant and Minority Health and she has made five presentations at
local, national and international conferences. She will also make a
presentation on her knowledge translation initiative at the Canadian
Association for Health Services and Policy Research from May 26-28 in
Gatineau, Quebec.
All these initiatives had an impact on
local policy and practice. Policy makers in Newfoundland and Labrador
have since implemented several recommendations for developing more
socio-culturally responsive services that take into consideration the
unique health-concerning needs of immigrants. Additionally, Ms.
Reitmanova’s results were used in the development of a new Immigration
Strategy released by the provincial government in March 2007, and the
Canadian Mental Health Association released a mental health brochure
that addressed some of the mental health information needs of the local
immigrant community that she identified in her research.
For further information on the Rising Star
Award, visit http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/34949.html.
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