Dear Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives Community,聽
Each term, HBHL provides updates on its progress, priorities and upcoming plans for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to ensure transparency and accountability regarding the commitments made in this crucially important area.
Progress made to June 2024聽
HBHL-IMPRESS
HBHL is proud to once more collaborate with Branches鈥斃Π骃M社区鈥檚 Community Outreach Program at Enrolment Services to support the neuroscience stream of the Indigenous Mentorship and Paid Research Experience for Summer Students (IMPRESS) program. The program places Indigenous students in the labs of 捆绑SM社区 professors to participate in paid summer internships. This year marks the third cohort of students participating in IMPRESS.
In previous years, HBHL supported up to 12 students engaging in brain health research in IMPRESS. However, the hiring freeze at 捆绑SM社区 has caused a significant reduction in outreach capacity, and HBHL will only be able to support six neuroscience-focused students. HBHL also continues to support the mentorship component of IMPRESS鈥檚 brain health research stream, which ensures students have role models who share similar academic and cultural backgrounds.
As part of the IMPRESS program, all individuals engaging with Indigenous students are asked to participate in a cultural competency workshop led by Prof. Geraldine King. The workshop provides attendees with information on how to create a safe space for their interns. Both administrative and academic members of the HBHL community attended this informative session.
Margaret MacKenzie, a student participant聽in the second year of IMPRESS and a McCall MacBain Scholar, recently joined Branches as the Indigenous Outreach Coordinator and was critical in ensuring the success of this year鈥檚 program.
To ensure the continued success of the IMPRESS program, HBHL is exploring funding opportunities beyond HBHL鈥檚 term to ensure this legacy program continues to receive funding for Indigenous undergraduate students looking to undertake brain health research.
Training
HBHL has hosted four EDI-related training events since January 2024, including two editions of the Building an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Plan for Research Funding Applications workshop and the Inclusive and Accessible Science Communication聽workshop. HBHL also featured Kate Webb (McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School) as a keynote speaker at the 2024 HBHL Symposium, for her talk "Socioenvironmental factors, PTSD and health equity: Characterizing the consequences of structural racism."
Undergraduate Summer Research Internship Program
The HBHL Trainee Committee led the creation and launch of the Undergraduate Summer Research Internship (USRI) for 捆绑SM社区 undergraduate students studying HBHL-relevant topics. This open internship program required that students have no previous research experience and prioritized first-generation students. Twenty undergraduate students were awarded $10,000 each for a four-month summer internship. The USRI students will present their final projects during a public poster talk during the Amazing Brain Science Talks event in October 2024.
Research Content
PI Consultation Hours
HBHL presented a workshop in the Fall of 2022 titled "Integrating EDI into Grant Applications." This session was well attended and the principal investigators' feedback from the post-event survey indicated that this type聽of guidance was strongly needed. To address this demand, HBHL launched a pilot program in the spring of 2023 offering individual sessions聽with inclusion consultant Falisha聽Karpati, PhD, where participating researchers are offered a one-hour session to meet one-on-one with Falisha. The consultations cover EDI in research design (including SGBA+) as well as EDI practices in the research team and environment.聽The feedback on the pilot was overwhelmingly positive, with all participants indicating they were very satisfied with the consultation and very likely to apply the advice they received to their research. Following the success of the pilot program, HBHL has decided to continue the program on an ongoing basis.
A recent testimonial speaks to the value of this initiative:
鈥淚 would like to thank ... the HBHL team for your initiative around diversity, equity and inclusion. I met with the HBHL consultant Falisha Karpati last week. The meeting was organized, efficient, and generated several pages of concrete and implementable suggestions for the C-BIG and Neuro VIP open science platforms. We tend to talk about EDI more than we tend to act, and the HBHL initiative that you have organized represents one of the most concrete opportunities for improvement in this domain that I have encountered during my faculty career.鈥�
- Dr. Jason Karamchandani
Canadian Framework for Brain Health Research
As part of HBHL鈥檚聽Canadian Framework for Brain Health Research (CFBHR) initiative,聽the first two phases of the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) in Neuroscience Initiative were carried out in spring 2024. HBHL hosted a project coordination workshop in March 2024, where 43 attendees, including neuroscience and social science researchers and trainees, met to discuss and provide feedback on the SDoH in Neuroscience Initiative and began to form teams to apply for funding in the next phase of the program.
A request for applications for the SDoH in Neuroscience Team Grant was launched in April 2024. The objective of this grant was to fund interdisciplinary teams to develop guidance on how to appropriately integrate the SDoH into different areas of neuroscience. As a requirement of the grant, each team had to include a Co-PI from neuroscience and a co-PI from the social sciences or otherwise with SDoH expertise. Peer review has been completed and Notices of Award have been issued.
Priorities over the next six months
Over the next six months, HBHL will:
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- Continue working with 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 Branches office to recruit HBHL-funded PIs to host Indigenous undergraduates in their labs for the 2025 edition of IMPRESS.
- Continue working with Brain Canada and the Neuro to explore funding possibilities beyond the term of HBHL to ensure the IMPRESS program鈥檚 sustainability.
- Continue collaborating with the HBHL Trainee Committee to support an EDI Project initiative like the USRI.
- Work with the 捆绑SM社区 Consortium on Analytics for Data-Driven Decision-Making (CAnD3) to offer lunch and learn workshops to the HBHL Community.
- Continue to provide one-on-one consultation hours for EDI best practices in grant applications.
- Work on reviewing and analyzing the data that will be collected in August for the 2024 Climate Survey. A final report will be prepared by end of the term and is expected to be published on the HBHL website in early 2025.
- Revise, update and publish the HBHL EDI key performance indicators on the HBHL website in the first quarter of 2025.
