Canadian children are currently not meeting the daily amount of physical activity recommended to reduce their risk for negative health outcomes. The RA Centre in Ottawa, Ontario has the resources to offer various sport opportunities to children and recognizes the need to develop programs that are developmentally appropriate and accessible for children with lower physical skill and confidence levels.

Studies of concussive events have shown that the response of the brain during an impact may not be the most reliable predictor of concussion, since the injury may be more closely related to the forces affecting the brainstem. A laboratory crash test protocol was developed to simulate player-to-player collisions in contact sports using crash test dummies and the impact forces on the dummy head were calculated.

The proposed research will support the effective knowledge translation of evidence-based best practice information related to healthy lifestyle behaviours (such as physical activity, healthy eating, smoking cessation, stress management, and alcohol moderation). Over a two-year period, the post-doctoral fellow will create a series of knowledge translation tools (including web- and smartphone-based applications) that can be used in the effective primary and secondary prevention of chronic disease through lifestyle behaviour modification.

Children born with an absent or ineffective right or left ventricle (single ventricle) have a low life expectancy and will undergo at least three surgical procedures ultimately leading to the Fontan Procedure (FP), which allows blood to travel directly to the lungs (bypassing the heart) to become oxygenated. Adolescent FP-patients indicate poor cardiovascular health which in turn could challenge brain blood flow, thereby affecting cognitive capacity and increasing risk of stroke. FP is a relatively new procedure and long-term effects on brain health are unknown.

The objective of the proposed internship is to conduct a needs assessment to identify the challenges of teaching physical education in elementary school, and determine supports/resources to improve teachers? confidence to instruct physical education. As the GoodLife Kids Foundation supports national, provincial, and local programs that provide ongoing physical activity opportunities for kids, findings from this project will be used to inform future program planning and evaluation of prior initiatives.

Personal Support Workers (PSWs) provide 70-80% of all paid home care. Unfortunately, they experience occupational injuries at more than twice the rate of the general population. These injuries increase costs for home care providers, reduce the availability of skilled workers, reduce workers’ quality of life, and impact the consistency of care that can be provided to clients.
This project is part of a larger study to directly measure the physical risk factors for common injuries as PSWs assist with daily activities in clients’ homes.

In this collaborative project with Muscular Dystrophy Canada (MDC), we will design and run choir singing and dancing programs for people with neuromuscular conditions, in order to study whether it improves their quality of life and their ability to breathe. Both singing and dancing have been shown to have significant medical and quality of life benefits for people with other kinds of disabilities, but little research has been done with those who have neuromuscular conditions. This will also be the first study to include participants who rely on ventilation technology to breathe.

A breathing machine (ventilator) is the foundation of the intensive care unit and has saved many lives but it is associated with lung injury. Collapse of parts of the lungs (atelectasis) is common in these patients due pressures on the lungs from lying flat for long periods of time. Alveoli are the small sacks in the lung where gas exchange occurs. During lung collapse, some of the alveoli close during part or all of the respiratory cycle. This opening and closing of the alveoli causes lung injury and alveoli that remain open can become over distended and injured.

Research has shown that rolling muscles can increase flexibility without hindering performance as well as to heighten pressure pain threshold. It was also shown that topically applied gels, which contain menthol, result in a cooling sensation and reduce the sensation of pain. While both modalities are suggested to influence pain perception through different pathways, their interactive effects have never been examined.

The proposed research will examine the effects of different concentrations of medical cannabis (high cannabidiol (CBD)/low tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on brain and heart physiology. CBD is ‘non-psychoactive’ and has shown to be anti-inflammatory, anti-depressive, and neuroprotective. However, limited clinical research is available on safe dosages for the human brain. Normal control participants without pathological or psychological disorders will undergo a dose escalation study to determine the safety and efficacy of high CBD/low THC.