Assistant Professors Kristin Cleverley and Craig Dale have each received a prestigious Connaught New Investigator Award.
The Connaught Research Fund is a competitive internal research program for University of Toronto researchers. It has a particular emphasis on funding young researchers who are just getting their research careers off the ground.
Cleverley, who is also the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing Chair in Mental Health Nursing Research, joined the faculty in 2015. The research funded by the Connaught award examines how children transition from using child mental health services to using adult mental health services once they turn 18. This point in time is particularly important as children who move into adulthood and fall away from mental health care are vulnerable to poor outcomes. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of research about what happens to youth as they age out of child mental health services. Prof. Cleverley’s program of research will investigate this problem with the aim of developing ways to make sure children and young adults receive the care they need.
Dale’s research focuses on the fundamental nursing care needs of acute and critically ill adults; he joined the faculty in 2014. He is also an Advanced Practice Nurse in Adult Intensive Care at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto and was recently appointed a Scientist with the University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Pain. Prof. Dale’s area of interest is in hygiene, pain and communication. He will look at how patients in critical care units – especially those on ventilators – are provided oral care (tooth brushing or rinsing). Oral care is vital to preventing infections and mouth ulcers, yet its delivery can be a challenge for nurses. Prof. Dale will get the patient perspective on this matter and use his research findings to determine the best way to protect patients from poor oral health outcomes such as pain, serious infection or death.