Twelve New Research Projects Addressing Health in Saskatchewan Funded by SHRF Align Grant

Osteoarthritis currently affects over 4 million Canadians and is estimated to cost our economy over $33 billion in direct healthcare expenses and indirect costs. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease characterized by progressive erosion of the articular cartilage. The management of osteoarthritis is difficult because cartilage has an extremely limited ability for self-repair. Current treatments include joint replacement and physiotherapy for improving joint function and alleviating pain, but these fail to repair damaged cartilage.

Development of engineered constructs for cartilage repair will be of immense benefit to patients who suffer from articular cartilage damage and injuries. This project is to establish a research collaboration at the University of Saskatchewan, and pursue an interdisciplinary study focused on the development of such engineered constructs by using the bioprinting technique. Successful completion of this project will help to launch a long-term collaboration in cartilage tissue engineering and repair damaged articular cartilage.

In Saskatchewan, legislation and regulation for the practice of nurse practitioners was enacted in 2003. Over the past 22 years, the nurse practitioner practice has evolved and expanded, yet two areas of concern remain in the recruitment and retention of nurse practitioners: scope of practice clarity and lack of funding models. A new interpretation of the Canada Health Act indicates in April 2026, services performed by a physician covered by the act will now also be covered if provided by a nurse practitioner. The purpose of this change is to uphold universal public access to government funded health care.

The aim of our project is to perform an analysis on health services data to inform the public, stakeholders and interprofessional teams about patient care services that are commonly obtained from nurse practitioners. This will fill a knowledge gap about the scope of practice, patterns of employment and contribute to the development of an equitable funding model for nurse practitioners in Saskatchewan.

In 2017, Saskatchewan lost one of its main sources of intercity transportation due to the closure of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC). This decision has made access to healthcare and key resources difficult for older adults. Many communities have generated solutions and initiatives to support travel across cities, yet very little is known about the distribution of these initiatives and the challenges faced by communities as they try to fill transportation gaps. The project seeks to conduct an environmental scan of community driven transportation solutions emerging since the loss of the STC and other major transportation providers such as Greyhound. The project also seeks to engage stakeholders at a half day event to build collaborations on how to create a coordinated, centralized public access point of information on existing community-based transportation interventions to improve access to healthcare, social services and maintain social connections.

In Saskatchewan, residential long-term care is home to residents living with advanced illnesses and frailty, making attention to a palliative approach to care essential to meet the needs of residents, family caregivers and staff. The Strengthening a Palliative Approach in Long-Term Care (SPA-LTC) model includes best practices for a palliative approach in long-term care. This model can be adapted and integrated in long-term care homes to support the needs of people living with a variety of life-limiting illnesses, including advanced frailty and dementia.

Researchers have previously partnered with long-term care homes to evaluate the value of the best practices in the SPA-LTC model, and this project will focus on the next steps to learn what processes support ongoing integration and sustainability of the best practices. Findings from this project will help identify important processes and mechanisms to support long-term care homes in sustaining palliative care approaches.

Intensive Care Unit (ICU) survivors experience significant transitions in care as they journey from the hospital to home. A “transition” occurs when a patient’s care is passed off to another healthcare provider. However, we know that each of these transitions in care represent moments that are at higher risk for adverse events, human error, and poor communication. Initiatives, such as incorporating a patient-oriented discharge summary (PODS), communication tools, and checklists, have been implemented in other ICUs to improve these transitions.

The primary goal of this project is the first stage in a multi-phase project to improve the transitions of care out of the ICU in Saskatchewan. During this initial background phase, we will work closely in partnership with patient-family advisors, healthcare providers, community members, and administrators and perform a comprehensive scoping literature review as well as survey our population using a general needs assessment. We will also study the role of generative artificial intelligence to relieve extra time pressure and burden on healthcare workers in creating PODS for patients.

There has been an abundance of research on the impact of social media on people’s wellbeing and mental health. But in today’s fast-paced digital workplace, communication tools like Teams and Slack have become central to how we collaborate. For digital workers like social media marketers and influencers who are chronically online, the impact of social media on their wellbeing is lesser known. In 2022, we conducted a small-scale literature review to address this issue. We designed training modules that educate people about mental wellbeing, particularly in the workplace. This project will update and expand our literature review and training modules about social media and mental health, share the findings to Saskatchewan businesses, and identify synergies between the academic and business communities.

‘Medication adherence’ is the extent to which patients take their medications as prescribed by their healthcare providers. Medication adherence is crucial for people with transplants, since medications are necessary for preventing rejection. The use of mobile devices has become an increasingly popular way for providing health education. It was recently shown that sending text message reminders helped patients improve their medication adherence.

Our team has developed a mobile application (app) called ‘HELP’ (the Health Education and Learning Platform). HELP was co-created with patients, care partners, healthcare providers and researchers to assist people with managing their health. In this project, we will consult with stakeholders to learn how the app can be optimized to improve medication adherence. Focus groups with patients, care partners and pharmacists will be conducted so we can reimagine how the app could be used in other healthcare settings. By repurposing our existing technology we hope to improve medication adherence and transplant outcomes in Saskatchewan and beyond.

Patient health information is currently not readily shared between hospitals and clinics in Saskatchewan because we lack a provincial electronic medical record. This leads to difficulty in locating and retrieving information, repeat testing, and is time-consuming for healthcare staff. The Ministry of Health has committed to fund an Anesthesia Information Management System, a specialized electronic charting system that will automate data collection during surgery, improve sharing of health information among healthcare providers and with patients, and enhance patient safety, leading to better outcomes after surgery. Using surveys and workshops with doctors, nurses and patients, we aim to understand and confirm workflow patterns, describe healthcare professionals’ readiness for change, and identify actionable solutions to support a smoother roll-out of this electronic charting system. Successful implementation of an electronic charting system will improve patient safety and support easy access to patient information, which is important for continuity of care.

This project aims to build relationships with Two-Spirit, transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming (2STNBGN) people living in rural and remote Saskatchewan and explore how they are engaging in wellness within their own communities. Our research team, consisting of two community-based researchers with lived experiences, will utilize photovoice, a qualitative research method to facilitate a deeper and more meaningful understanding of 2STNBGN experiences in rural and remote Saskatchewan. We aim to recure 10-15 participants across Saskatchewan collecting photo and narratives that will help prioritize wellness initiatives and partnerships to further strengthen wellness of Saskatchewan 2STNBGN people living in rural and remote areas in Saskatchewan.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive brain disorder with symptoms including slow movements, tremors, stiffness, and balance difficulties. Parkinson’s disease is diagnosed clinically based on a thorough examination of a patient's symptoms and medical history, but definite diagnosis cannot be made without a brain autopsy. Previous studies have revealed that clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease is incorrect 20-25% of the time. Currently, the few laboratory tests available for diagnosing Parkinson’s diseases are either inaccessible, physically invasive, or expensive.

There is an urgent need for cost-effective and non-invasive laboratory tests to help with accurate diagnosis. We propose a novel yet simple method for Parkinson’s disease diagnosis by detecting organic chemical compounds from people’s earwax and skin oil. A highly sensitive analytical instrument will be used to detect these compounds, and the patterns between Parkinson’s disease patients and healthy individuals will be compared.

Research consistently highlights that post-secondary education significantly enhances career opportunities and independent living outcomes for youth with experiences in government care. This project aims to explore the barriers and supports affecting the education journeys of youth in care and former youth in care in Saskatchewan, especially for attaining post-secondary education. We aim to understand the effectiveness of existing support programs and uncover unmet needs those youth identify as necessary and supportive of their capacity to attend, and to graduate from post-secondary education. This will be done through collaboration with child welfare professionals and interviewing youth still in care, youth who have recently aged out, and the adults who support them. The findings will guide policymakers, educational institutions, and organizations in enhancing their programs and services, ensuring that all youth in, and aging out of care have the best chances of pursuing their educational goals.

Ticks and tick-borne diseases are an emerging public health problem in Canada. The blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis) transmits the tick-borne spirochete that cause Lyme borreliosis in humans. Over the last 15 years, we have conducted passive surveillance for blacklegged ticks in Saskatchewan.

The purpose of this project is to analyze our passive tick surveillance data and answer the following questions: (1) Did encounters with I. scapularis and Saskatchewan residents increase over the last 15 years? (2) As I. scapularis prefers habitats with deciduous trees and leaf litter, is this tick species more frequently encountered in the Aspen Parkland and Boreal Transition ecoregions of Saskatchewan? And (3) Did the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens in I. scapularis ticks change over the last 15 years. This study will summarize our current state of knowledge on the risk of encountering blacklegged ticks and their tick-borne pathogens in the province of Saskatchewan. These answers will be an important resource for the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health to plan its public health messaging strategy for ticks and tick-borne diseases and to plan for future tick surveillance in Saskatchewan.