Research team receives funding from New Frontiers in Research Fund

Professor Gideon Christian is the co-principal investigator for a research team exploring immigrant/racialized community mobilization towards empowerment
through community-based health data cooperative, which received $250,000 in funding from the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF).

Launched in 2018, the NFRF funds interdisciplinary, high-risk/high-reward, transformative and rapid-response research led by Canadian researchers working with Canadian and international partners. It is designed to support world-leading innovation and enhance Canada’s competitiveness and expertise in the global, knowledge-based economy.

The Exploration stream, under which this project falls, supports high-risk, high-reward and interdisciplinary research. It seeks to inspire projects that bring disciplines together beyond traditional disciplinary or common interdisciplinary approaches by research teams. Interdisciplinary research is often risky, but worthwhile, given the potential for significant, groundbreaking impact.

The project team will explore the creation of community based health data cooperatives (HDC) in an immigrant community, considering ethical & legal frameworks, organization management, data security, privacy, computing science, knowledge mobilization, and community development.

The goal of this exploration grant is to achieve the following interconnected objectives:

(I) To build a diverse interdisciplinary team comprised of immigrant-community members, academics, policymakers, and non-governmental organizations on the initiative of HDC;

(II) To undertake a comprehensive environmental scan, including stakeholder analysis to conduct key-informant interviews, gather feedback, and summarize existing models of cooperatives that will inform this initiative;

(III) To conduct early-stage assessments determining sustainability and scalability of the HDC initiative.

Team members include:

• Tanvir Chowdhury, principal investigator, UCalgary
• Gideon Christian, co-principal investigator, UCalgary
• vineet saini, Alberta Health Services
• Shaminder Singh, Mount Royal University
• Tashfeen Hussain, Mount Royal University
• Deidre Lake, Alberta International Medical Graduate Association
• Hude Quan, UCalgary
• Christine Walsh, UCalgary

The project is one of 11 UCalgary projects to receive funding from NFRF.