Background: Substance-related harm is a leading public health issue in Canada, with over 30,000 opioid-toxicity deaths across Canada since 2016, and clear evidence of worsening trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to rapid shifts in clinical practice and the implementation of numerous policies and investments in services designed to support people who use drugs and prevent drug toxicities. In Ontario, large, linked health administrative databases provide an opportunity to inform and evaluate this rapidly shifting landscape to ensure optimum investment in safe, effective responses to the overdose crisis.

Learning Objectives:

1. Discuss strengths and limitations of data available for research purposes in Ontario that can be used to study substance-related diagnoses and harms

2. Describe examples of how these data can inform and evaluate policies and programs and the implications of this work

3. Share the importance and benefits of engaging people who use drugs in the research process

Time of Event: 12PM EST

Background: Many current or promising strategies for suicide prevention are necessarily evaluated

via observational studies. That is, it is not always feasible to conduct a randomized

trial to estimate the effect of a given treatment, intervention, decision, policy, or law

on suicide risk in a population. This talk will focus on how rigor, transparency, and

creativity can improve our causal inferences from observational data, and thereby

ultimately improve our understanding of what strategies work for suicide prevention.

Examples will be drawn from observational studies of lethal means access.

For Zoom Link: tracie.afifi@umanitoba.ca

Recording: https://umanitoba.zoom.us/rec/share/7EAv4ha2DpaMeTRKkp9iX6snr3tU_PS6vvpNVjVkymzWgBclmlyYF-SIfkm51yt-.Nw2r7I_dynGVlWLK

Password: Check CAPE email

Time of Event: 11 AM Central Time, 12 PM EST

Background: Statistics Canada has collected mental health data since 2002, from a variety of populations. This presentation will present an overview of some of the prominent Statistics Canada data sources that contain detailed assessments of mental health, and some of the data sources that assess mental health in a more general manner. Methods of accessing Statistics Canada data and how to submit a research proposal to access a Research Data Centre will also be provided. 

For Zoom Link: tracie.afifi@umanitoba.ca

Recording: https://umanitoba.zoom.us/rec/share/moG2R5sIzViD3MBMR3z6P57H2MLhUSRxp6Q3OtATz7ekzsBYpn_dyRHaILlwfq9h.2RVjpHEbjlHf82pt

Passcode: @Sq^^2Nk

Background: Measurement invariance is a psychometric property of a scale that describes the extent to which the scale is valid across different groups. This applied talk will provide a brief introduction to the notion of measurement invariance, an overview of the general approach to testing for invariance (including a worked example), and other considerations related to invariance testing. A previous introduction to confirmatory factor analysis and Mplus software is helpful, but not required. 

Panel from the University of Manitoba: 

Jitender Sareen MD 

Tracie Afifi PhD 

Murray Enns MD 

Natalie Mota PhD 

Shay-Lee Bolton PhD 

Background: Historically there has been great interest in the mental health of our Canadian Armed Forces. Much of this research has been based on clinical databases of help-seekers, with very few studies based at a population level. In 2002, this team of researchers from the University of Manitoba began working with an epidemiologic dataset of actively serving CAF soldiers when Statistics Canada released the CCHS-CFS, a ground-breaking representative dataset collected in collaboration with CAF, which informed policy and planning for many years. After lengthy discussions between researchers, CAF, Statistics Canada, CIMVHR and others, a collaborative team agreed to re-survey the soldiers, many of whom had transitioned to civilian life. 

Learning Objectives: Participants will learn about the 2018 Canadian Armed Forces Members and Veterans Mental Health Follow-up Survey (CAFVMHS) from members of the original team who designed the longitudinal survey. The process behind key stakeholder engagement, the design and methodology of the data collection, and important new findings from the data will be discussed