Bloomberg Nursing’s Dr. Jennifer Stinson is the latest member of our community to be honoured with a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Investigator Award. In addition, the associate professor received Canada’s Premier Young Researcher: The Peter Lougheed/CIHR New Investigator Salary Award. The recipient of the latter award is selected from amongst the top ranked awardees from the annual CIHR New Investigator Award program.
“I am truly honoured to receive such a prestigious award,” said Stinson. “This award will enable me to continue to address clinical questions that are important to the children and youth with chronic and complex health care needs that I work with, and ensure my research is translated to improve the care and quality of life of these children.”
The aim of Dr. Stinson’s program of research is to improve the way healthcare is delivered to Canadian children with life threatening and chronic illnesses and their families using the latest in information and communications technologies (ICTs). Her program of research is composed of two inter-related content areas subsumed under the overarching theme of promoting shared-management (children [8-11 years] and their parents jointly manage the disease) and self-management (youth 12-18 years) in paediatric chronic and life threatening health conditions. This is accomplished using: (1) electronic diaries to monitor and support clinical decision making regarding pain and other symptoms; and (2) internet-based disease management and transitional care programs to improve child health outcomes.
This research program builds upon Stinson’s doctoral and post-doctoral research in which she developed and tested a pain e-diary and an Internet-based disease self-management program using juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) as a prototypical model of childhood chronic illness. The e-diary and web-based program are now being applied to youth with cancer, haemophilia, sickle cell disease and solid organ transplant, as well as children with JIA and their parents. Additional research foci are knowledge translation and inter-professional pain education activities.
In addition to her role with the Faculty of Nursing, Stinson is also a clinician scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences in the Research Institute and an advanced practice nurse in the chronic pain program at the Hospital for Sick Children. An alumnus of Bloomberg Nursing, she completed both her Masters and PhD at U of T. She’s also received several other prestigious awards, including the Ontario Ministry of Health Long Term Career Scientist Award and the Canadian Arthritis Network Investigator Award.
The objective of the CIHR New Investigator Award is to provide outstanding new investigators with the opportunity to develop and demonstrate their independence in initiating and conducting health research through provision of a contribution to their salary. The Canada’s Premier Young Researcher: Peter Lougheed/CIHR New Investigator Award is CIHR’s most important career development award. Given to Canada’s brightest young researchers at the beginning of their careers, this five-year award represents an important incentive for young researchers to pursue their work in Canada.