SASKATOON - Five Saskatchewan researchers were recognized today for excellence and achievement in community based children’s health, for pursuing knowledge of chronic disease and mental health patterns in rural communities, and for seeking answers to combating HIV and memory loss.
The researchers are the award recipients from the annual Santé! Awards Dinner at the Delta Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon presented by the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF).
“A vibrant research sector is essential to providing patients with high quality, effective health care,” said Saskatchewan Minister of Health Don McMorris, who was on hand to present the awards. “The knowledge gained from this outstanding research will support innovative health solutions that serve patients in the best way possible.”
Nazeem Muhajarine, professor and chair of the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan, receives the 2009 SHRF Achievement Award for career achievement and groundbreaking work on the community foundations of children’s health.
This year’s SHRF Top Researcher Awards winners are Linda Chelico, Lisa Lix, Binbing Ling, and Changgui Kou, all from the University of Saskatchewan. These Awards recognize research excellence, going to the top-ranked applicants in SHRF’s 2009 funding competitions.
“Tonight’s award recipients exemplify how our health researchers clearly identify pressing issues that matter to Saskatchewan people, and work to find the answers,” said SHRF CEO June Bold. “We are proud to support and celebrate the excellent work of these innovators as they embrace our province’s unique opportunities and its pressing health challenges.”
The recipients:

Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine

Nazeem Muhajarine – 2009 SHRF Achievement Award
Muhajarine is a champion of identifying what it is in a community that is essential to nurturing healthy children that grow up to be well-adjusted, productive citizens. He is professor and chair of the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, and a research faculty member of the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit (SPHERU), where he leads the Healthy Children research team.
His commitment to creating and sharing new knowledge in child health has led him to develop close partnerships with other researchers as well as government, First Nations, and other community leaders. Examples include the seven-year Understanding the Early Years study, the evaluation of the provincial KidsFirst early intervention program, and the creation of the Saskatchewan Knowledge to Action Network for early childhood development, or kidSKAN. He is contributing to the national effort to create the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in measuring the health of Canadians. In his role as a mentor, Muhajarine has supervised 15 masters students, six PhD students, five postdoctoral research fellows, and has served on more than three dozen graduate student committees. He is author and co-author on more than 170 research articles, conference papers, and technical reports on population health.

Dr. Linda Chelico

Linda Chelico - Top New Investigator - Biomedical
Chelico, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the U of S College of Medicine, is studying APOBEC3G, a human enzyme that can suppress replication in certain strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Understanding how the enzyme hampers HIV reproduction could be a first step in developing new therapies against HIV that use the body’s own defenses.

Dr. Lisa Lix

Lisa Lix - Top New Investigator - Socio-Health
Lix, from the U of S School of Public Health, is looking at the accuracy and completeness of health system databases such as drug prescriptions that are used to study outcomes including chronic disease. Using statistical tools, she hopes to identify and fix deficiencies in these crucial resources, and in so doing improve the quality of the research and decisions based upon them.

Dr. Changgui Kou

Changgui Kou - Top Postdoctoral Fellowship Award - Socio-Health
Kou, from the Department of Psychiatry in the U of S College of Medicine, will be analyzing large Statistics Canada datasets, looking at rates of mental illness such as depression, as well as the availability of services for people living in rural and remote communities. This knowledge will be extremely useful in developing rural mental health policies.

Dr. Binbing Ling

Binbing Ling - Top Postdoctoral Fellowship Award - Biomedical
Ling, from the U of S College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, is studying lactic acidosis, a condition that can arise in diabetics, people who have had surgery to remove part of their bowel, or people who suffer from severe diarrhea – a common illness in the developing world. Better understanding of how lactic acidosis may contribute to neurological disorders such as autism and memory loss could shed light on possible treatments.

The Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation is the provincial agency that funds and facilitates health research in this province. In 2009, the Foundation approved close to $6 million in new multi-year grants and awards. This includes support for 10 new investigators, seven post-doctoral researchers, four developing research groups, and 11 research conferences or workshops. SHRF also drew nearly $1.4 of national funding to the province through partnerships with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
For more information, including a full listing of funded researchers and summaries of their work, visit www.shrf.ca.

For more information, contact:
Michael Robin
Communications Manager
Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation
Phone: (306) 975-1687
mrobin@shrf.ca