According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, mental health concerns in children and youth have become more prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted formative life experiences.
Governments have responded with increased funding for youth who need supports, but there continues to be a lack of understanding of the root causes of mental illness. New research is examining whether mental illnesses are passed down through generations and the implications for policymakers and care providers working with children.
Dr. Amani Hamad, assistant professor of community health sciences at the Max Rady College of Medicine in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, is studying the multi-generational occurrences of mental illnesses and other chronic conditions. She will now be supported through the Canada Research Chair program (Tier 2), allowing her to continue and expand upon her work.
Her appointment as a Canada Research Chair in population data science and data curation comes with $100,000 annually in funding over five years, with the possibility of renewal for a further five years.
Hamad earned her PhD at UM’s College of Pharmacy. Her research focuses on analyzing administrative data (routinely collected, anonymized government data, such as records of doctor visits, diagnoses, hospitalizations and prescriptions) in order to construct family health histories for the Manitoba population and investigate the intergenerational transfer of mental illness.
She will use data stored in the Manitoba Population Research Data Repository held at UM’s Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. This world-class repository includes records of Manitobans’ contacts with the social service, justice and education systems, as well as the health-care system. It’s a unique and powerful resource for answering questions about the well-being of the entire Manitoba population, and especially about health care, public health and the social determinants of health.
"Manitoba is unique with an exceptional collection of administrative data that is unmatched in its comprehensiveness," says Hamad. "This repository is one of very few in the world, and the only one in North America, that allows for the linkage of both health and non-health data for the entire population and across generations."
"Congratulations to Dr. Hamad for receiving this prestigious appointment that reinforces the strength and breadth of health and machine learning research excellence at the University of Manitoba," says Mario Pinto, Vice-President Research and International. "Her significant contributions to knowledge and the development of data will be invaluable in helping advance the collective understanding of the social determinants of health in populations."
More information on Hamad’s work can be found in these open-source articles:
Hamad is a member of the Pediatrics Special Interest Group at the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology, the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the International Population Data Linkage Network.
She acknowledges her mentors who supported her as an immigrant scholar from Jordan and plans to continue mentoring other new researchers as she develops her research program at UM.
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.
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