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Consultation first step in creating EUC Black Mentorship Program 

Black female students women alumni

By Elaine Smith

When Brandon Hay began working toward his master of environmental studies (MES) degree at York University in 2014, he was the only Black male in many of his classes. 

“I consistently asked myself if I belonged here,” he said. “I questioned how much of myself to bring to class, wondering whether my fellow students would understand me.”

Brandon Hay
Brandon Hay

Hay discovered a sense of community as a graduate assistant to the Transitional Year Program, but he hopes that current plans to implement a pilot Black Mentorship Program at the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change (EUC) this fall will offer incoming students support from the start of their university careers. 

The Faculty is launching this Black student-to-alumni mentorship program in accordance with EUC’s Black Inclusion Plan to enhance learning opportunities and support for Black EUC students. 

“Black students need spaces where they can talk about things that affect them, whether it’s anti-Black violence happening in the United States or their own experiences,” said Hay, founder of the Black Daddies Club. “If this program is centralized [within York or the Faculty], they won’t have to seek out support.” 

Hay was a speaker at EUC’s first consultation about how to create a meaningful program to address the needs of EUC’s Black community, held on March 22. EUC staff members Rosanna Chowdhury, experiential education coordinator, and Joanne Huy, alumni engagement and events officer, co-led this hybrid event with Senior DEDI Advisor, Education and Communication, Melissa Theodore. The event was attended by about 30 faculty, staff, students and alumni. Attendees who were Black and/or members of equity-deserving groups of the York community were willing to share their experiences and offer suggestions for the type of supports that would be useful.  

EUC Dean Alice Hovorka opened the session by welcoming those assembled in person and attending virtually, followed by Hay’s talk. Participants then took part in a knowledge building circle, discussing how EUC could support Black students and Black futures through community engagement, representation and education. Afterward, there were breakout sessions focused on each of these topics individually. The organizers will use the information provided by participants to consider how to shape the pilot program. 

Chowdhury led the community engagement breakout sessions with Huy and Theodore and found that the discussion centred around building and sustaining community. Participants touched on having recurring events and meetings in a space where individuals can participate. They also mentioned the importance of finding ways to be inclusive of all their intersecting identities. 

“The conversation flowed,” Chowdhury said. “This was a good first step. The goal is to prepare a report on the information we gathered and share it with the attendees and the community as it will inform the best practices for the mentorship program. We will also host a second event or a survey to gather additional input. Once we get feedback, we’ll design a pilot program for September 2023 launch. 

“We’re not sure yet what that program will look like. It could become a community mentorship program where a group of students is mentored by more than one person, or we might create a space for people to meet and find their own mentors. It could be a mix of models.”

Lord-Emmanuel Achidago
Lord-Emmanuel Achidago

Lord-Emmanuel Achidago, a second-year master’s degree student in geography from Ghana, expressed particular interest in career mentorship. 

“I’d like insights on opportunities that exist and networking to help meet other people in the field,” he said. “Talking to people with more experience can be enlightening. They can advise you on the other skills you need to develop to get a competitive edge. 

“When you meet people who share your identity, it’s easier to connect.” 

Chowdhury is confident the program will reap rewards for the participants. “There are many people with a common interest in making it succeed,” she said.  

“Not only will the pilot program assist our Black students, but it will help inform future EUC mentorship programs focused on supporting all students from marginalized groups.”  

EUC champions hands-on learning, immersive outdoor classrooms

For the birds project

By Angela Ward  

In the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change (EUC), students gain hands-on education through a variety of experiences, dismantling the traditional four walls of a classroom.

Lisa Myers
Lisa Myers
Phyllis Novak
Phyllis Novak

In the Community Arts for Social Change course, taught by Professor Lisa Myers, EUC students collaborated to create the “For the Birds” window mural. Designed out of the student-run Sky Studio Collective and headed by graduate student Phyllis Novak, it now sits outside the first floor of the Health, Nursing and Environmental Studies (HNES) Building. It serves as a reminder to care for the songbirds in the design of built spaces, after the estimated 1,000 deaths each year from window glass. 

“The project came out of research in which we considered our relationships with the sky world, and the life cycle of the songbird,” Novak says. “It was great to co-design with 30 students in the class. And to make sure our designs connected with the outdoor space at HNES/EUC including the Native Plant Garden – a great draw and habitat for the more-than-human species around us. I then worked with four EUC students, as a collaborator, to produce the final mural application.”  

As director of Maloca Living Labs – Community and Native Plant Gardens, Novak also sees the arts playing key roles in environmental education. “There’s so much opportunity and so much we can do,” Novak explains. “Both the arts and environmentalism serve each other, but the arts are accessible, make way for subjectivity, and offer a more-than-words-alone way to struggle through and communicate about urgent issues such as land, food and racial justice. 

“The arts are a great way to archive and map stories that have preceded us in these Anishinaabeg territories, and a modality from which to (re)learn relationships with the natural world that can help us all move forward. Interacting with ‘place’ through the arts broadens ecological consciousness. My aim is to integrate the arts in urban agriculture, community gardening and environmental learning and activations in EUC’s Maloca and Native Plant Gardens.”

Patrick Mojdehi
Patrick Mojdehi

Living labs are a huge part of EUC’s makeup. “The ability to gather your own data, rather than reviewing someone else’s data and getting outside the four walls of a classroom is a neat experience; not a lot of courses have this component to it,” says Patrick Mojdehi, laboratory technician/field course support, EUC. “Some challenges include not always having a roof over your head and calm conditions, but you must prepare for these elements by having the right clothing, right mindset and right protection. Being adaptable and resilient is an important life lesson. 

“I recall an experience where I was very cold, my hands were in the freezing cold water, but we still took the samples and got the work done. We felt better for it and since we were there with colleagues, we made those types of friendships where you collaboratively experience those hardships together.”  

Mojdehi has over a decade of technical experience in environmental geoscience; and is capable of conducting various research experiments, report writing and sampling methods and design. 

Mojdehi believes that experiential education (EE) is fundamental to a student’s education. “I think that students should really get to it, do it and experience it. Once you go through some type of EE experience, you fall in love with it. It’s very rewarding.”  

As for the career readiness and employment EUC provides, EE offers a challenging yet meaningful experience. “There is a huge paradigm shift these days towards experience and hands-on learning. Having this experience on your resume is beneficial because in terms of physical geography and environmental sciences, companies are doing the same on a larger, more repetitive scale,” Mojdehi explains.

Field trip
One of the experiential education opportunities for EUC students

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and how that changed science practices, Mojdehi sees a need for science students in EUC complementing their online research with online resources. He says, “Since things are always changing and adapting, I do see it going this way. We’ve used census data and satellite imagery data in the past; which are a type of old open educational resources (OER), where we make digital maps.”  

Moe Clark, a Métis multidisciplinary artist who held a guest workshop in ENVS 1100 The Land We’re On: Treaties, Art and Environment, says that her work is grounded in environmental soundscapes, spoken word poetry and experiential learning. Clark explains, “The innate power of video and the visual realm are at the frontlines of social and political movements as they communicate directly to convey story and transmit understanding. 

“One example during the workshop I presented includes Anishinaabe writer, poet and activist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s piece How to Steal a Canoe. In her video, she used her ancestral tongue, Anishinaabemowin, to speak about power, kinship relationships and the process of locating ourselves. The repetition within her spoken text included images of water as earth blood, used to nurture a dried-out birch bark canoe. I invited students to consider the images and coded symbolisms within their writing and demonstrated how Simpson codifies her work through re-matriation (repatriation) practices of Land Back from an Anishinaabe Kwe perspective.”   

Betasamosake Simpson’s poem was complemented with vivid animations by Amanda Strong. “Strong is a Métis animator based in Vancouver. Her visual language offered examples of ways to weave these living metaphors within the cellphim realm to underscore land acknowledgements. Land acknowledgments then become more than a concept; they become a sensory experience of place.” 

In her workshop, Clark encourages her students to consider how relationships are dynamic and living, explaining, “They should be wary of placing any relationship, any understanding of power, of treaty relations or of land claims or land title as a past thing. I want to ensure students are upholding and uplifting their roles as allies, as immigrants, refugees and settlers and they are improving how they build and maintain relationships.”  

EUC aims to create meaningful experience for its students that are different, unique and rewarding, equipping them to become career ready, and become critically and creatively engaged as future changemakers in this time of unprecedented environmental change.  

Research calls for governance of wildlife trade in pandemic treaty

Black woman typing on a laptop

Researchers from York University’s Faculty of Health have co-authored a study investigating the governance of pandemic prevention in the context of wildlife trade.

Published in The Lancet Planetary Health, the research considers the current institutional landscape for pandemic prevention and how prevention of zoonotic spillovers from the wildlife trade for human consumption should be incorporated into a pandemic treaty.

Raphael Aguiar
Raphael Aguiar
Adrian Viens
Adrian Viens
Mary Wiktorowicz

Professors Mary Wiktorowicz and A.M. Viens, along with doctoral candidate Raphael Aguiar, collaborated on the research with colleagues from the University of Washington. The researchers argue that a pandemic treaty should be “explicit about zoonotic spillover prevention and focus on improving coordination across four policy domains, namely public health, biodiversity conservation, food security, and trade.”

A pandemic treaty, they say, should include four interacting goals in relation to prevention of zoonotic spillovers from the wildlife trade for human consumption: risk understanding; risk assessment; risk reduction; and enabling funding.

Ideas about preventative actions for pandemics have been advanced during COVID-19, but researchers say more consideration on how these actions can be operationalized, with respect to wildlife trade for human consumption, is needed.

“To date, pandemic governance has mostly focused on outbreak surveillance, containment, and response rather than on avoiding zoonotic spillovers in the first place,” the study states. “However, given the acceleration of globalization, a paradigm shift towards prevention of zoonotic spillovers is warranted as containment of outbreaks becomes unfeasible.”

According to Raphael, “A risk-based approach to wildlife trade and its interconnected threats can be used to situate the governance of pandemic prevention in relation to their shared causal pathways. This approach enables more efficient coordination of responses.”

Trade-offs must be carefully balanced to meet multiple objectives, says Wiktorowicz. For instance, while bans on all wildlife trade could reduce health risks, they may undermine access to food for some local and indigenous populations around the world and alter incentives for sustainable land use.

“Pandemic prevention at source needs to be based on a better understanding of how interaction with wildlife increases health risks to humans along the entire trade chain, so that overregulation does not occur,” says Wiktorowicz.

The researchers note that containment of zoonotic outbreaks and prevention of spillovers into pandemics could become more difficult to manage with increased globalization and urbanization, and this calls for an international institutional arrangement that accounts specifically for these possibilities.

“The current pandemic treaty negotiations present an opportunity for a multilateral approach, to address deep prevention,” adds Viens.

Read the full study “Global governance for pandemic prevention and the wildlife trade.”

Wiktorowicz and co-author Eduardo Gallo Cajiao (University of Washington) will present the paper in a seminar at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research on April 26 at 1 p.m. See the event listing online for more information and details on how to attend.

Study explores barriers, opportunities for implementing Finnish Baby Box concept in Canada

A new study out of York University examines how the Finnish Baby Box concept was instituted across nations identified as liberal welfare states, such as Canada, the U.K. and the U.S., that minimize income redistribution, social spending and management of the labour market. It also identified numerous barriers to building progressive public policy in these nations.

For more than 80 years in Finland, expectant mothers have been provided with a cardboard box containing an extensive collection of clothing, bathing products and diapers, together with bedding and a small mattress, which could be used to place the baby in if necessary.

Dennis Raphael
Dennis Raphael

Faculty of Health Professor Dennis Raphael and Alexis Blair-Hamilton, a recent graduate of the Health Studies program at York and lead author of the study, investigated how the concept was translated in liberal welfare states. Raphael says they were led to do so by their observing that governmental authorities and the media in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. put forth the mistaken belief that Finland’s very low infant mortality rate was achieved by having babies sleep in the box rather than by the advantages provided by Finland’s extensive social democratic welfare state.

Using a critical case study methodology, the study looked at whether the Finnish Baby Box concept’s implementation in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. experienced message distortion (having the box serve as a means of preventing SIDS rather than providing essentials associated with childbirth), commercialization and watering down of content and authorities, and media separation of the baby box concept from the broad array of Finnish welfare state policies that support families with children.

Numerous barriers to building progressive public policy in these three countries were identified, including: “the structures and processes of the liberal welfare state, commercial interests that skew public policymaking and media logic that limits news reporting to the concrete and simple, eschewing complex analysis.”

Additionally, the researchers found that only Scotland and Wales recognized the decommodification and equity roles played by the Finnish baby box and its contents. The authors noted that in Scotland and Wales, like Finland, governing authorities were decidedly on the left-wing of national politics, demonstrating how a commitment to equity and social democracy serve as important spurs to health promoting public policy. Barriers and opportunities in liberal welfare states for implementing such public policy to support families and promote health and well-being were considered.

The full study “A critical analysis of the Finnish Baby Box’s journey in to the liberal welfare state: Implications for progressive public policymaking” is available for free download until May 17. To obtain a copy of the study after May 17, contact Raphael at draphael@yorku.ca.

Harry Jerome Leadership Award goes to York alum Rosemarie Powell

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York University alum Rosemarie Powell (MES ’15) will be honoured at the 2023 Harry Jerome Awards for her long-serving work in advancing social, economic and environmental justice.

Rosemarie Powell
Rosemarie Powell

The Harry Jerome Awards recognize excellence in the African Canadian community. Powell will be presented with the Leadership Award on April 29 during the 41st Black Business and Professional Association (BBPA) Annual Harry Jerome Awards Gala.

Powell is executive director of the Toronto Community Benefits Network, a non-profit community-labour coalition where she advocates for disadvantaged communities and equity-seeking groups in the City of Toronto. In this role, she has grown the community benefits movement and strengthened the coalition to create good jobs and opportunities through government investment in infrastructure and urban development for Black, Indigenous and racialized peoples with a focus on those who are youth, women and newcomers.

With more than 20 years of service to grassroots communities and organizations, Powell has led numerous community-based programs and services that support marginalized and under-represented groups and their access to the labour market. Throughout her career, she has advanced equitable approaches to policy development and implementation at various levels of government as it relates to land use planning, infrastructure investment and urban development.

She is the recipient of several awards for her leadership and imagination in community engagement and environmental advocacy, and has previously held roles at the Jamaican Canadian Association, the Jane-Finch Community and Family Centre, and Skills for Change.

Established in the memory of Harry Jerome, an outstanding African Canadian Olympic athlete, scholar and social advocate, the BBPA Harry Jerome Awards celebrates African Canadian achievement that pays tribute to outstanding and inspirational African Canadians who are role models of excellence.

The Harry Jerome Awards focus on a number of different categories, including athletics, leadership, young entrepreneurs, business, professional excellence, leadership, arts/media entertainment, health sciences. These awards are done through a nomination process by individuals and organizations across the country.

The Board of Directors additionally selects the president’s, lifetime achievement and diversity awards.

Professor becomes York’s first School of Nursing doctoral graduate

Diploma

By Alexander Huls, deputy editor, YFile

Ramesh Venkatesa Perumal, a sessional assistant professor in the Faculty of Health, became the first doctoral graduate of York’s School of Nursing program on Feb. 21 when he successfully defended his dissertation, “Impact of social support and mentoring on career advancement of internationally educated nurses.”

Venkatesa Perumal’s significant accomplishment is only the latest in an ongoing journey around nursing, which he has long considered his calling.

When Venkatesa Perumal was growing up in south India, his father encouraged him to become a nurse. Following his father’s advice, Venkatesa Perumal enrolled in the nursing program at the Christian Medical College Vellore, hopeful it would be the right career path for him. Because the college valued experiential education, within a few months Venkatesa Perumal was already allowed to care for patients, and he quickly realized how perfectly nursing suited him. “I thought, ‘I’m in a place where I can actually make some difference,’” he says. “I took it upon me as if it was a calling that I had to fulfill.”

That calling, initially, wasn’t without its challenges. Male nurses in India were rare, and he faced limited perceptions of what he was capable of. Too often he would be asked to only perform physical tasks, such as lifting immobile patients. It became important for Venkatesa Perumal to advocate that he – and other male nurses – could do more than just physical care. “We are critical thinkers. We are nurses who will be able to provide excellent care, as any other nurse will do, irrespective of gender,” he says. For him, even in the early days of his career, his guiding philosophy for excellent care became clear: compassion. “Knowledge and skills you can always learn. It’s that human touch that people are looking for,” he says.

Venkatesa Perumal completed a bachelor of science in nursing, then a master’s of science, and went on to accept a position as a lecturer at Sultan Qaboos University in the city of Muscat in Oman. During his 10 years there, he developed a significant career: he was a professor, helped establish a Bachelor of Nursing program, and became an assistant dean of undergraduate studies. After a decade, however, he was looking for change and more opportunity, so he and his wife – also a nurse – decided to move to Canada.

Ramesh Venkatesa Perumal (right) with his doctoral supervisor, Mina Singh.
Ramesh Venkatesa Perumal (right) with his doctoral supervisor, Mina Singh

Once they arrived in Ontario, Venkatesa Perumal’s calling met an unexpected career detour. His education wasn’t deemed equivalent to a Canadian education, and he would have to go back to school to bridge the academic gaps if he wanted to continue in the field of nursing. The decision was discouraging at the time, but he credits that turn of events with a lifechanging blessing. “It actually opened the doors for me to come to York University,” he says.

He became a student in the Post-RN Internationally Educated Nurses BScN Program. There he met professors who he credits for nurturing and mentoring him, as well as honoring – not ignoring – his previous extensive experience and accomplishments. That was impactful to him not just as a student but a recent arrival to Canada. “Immigrants are like uprooted trees. When they’re getting ready to be replanted, they need extra nourishment, they need extra water, they need extra protection. That was given to me by the amazing teachers at York University,” he says.

He obtained his BScN, and his professors encouraged him to go further and pursue a doctoral study. His chosen subject was one close to his heart: the impact social and mentor support can have on internationally educated nurses.

“Being an internationally educated nurse, I always felt that I had a moral responsibility to give back to the community of nurses who are coming into this country as immigrants,” he says. “I thought, ‘What way could I be of help to the internationally educated nurses? I was lucky enough to have the additional support that helped me to continue with my passion. Is that help available to everybody who is coming into this country?’”

He began his doctoral work in September 2018, and was one among several others positioned to be the inaugural doctoral candidates of the new PhD in Nursing program. In February of this year, he became the first to complete the program.

Venkatesa Perumal’s accomplishment is one that the School of Nursing shares in. “It is a historic moment,” says Mina Singh, a professor in the Faculty of Health, and Venkatesa Perumal’s doctoral supervisor. “We’ve been a school for over 25 years and for us to get our first PhD completion is a very big event. It’s important for us, within York University, and the Faculty of Health, to raise our profile and highlight we’re now graduating doctoral students.”

Singh is certain Venkatesa Perumal’s ongoing journey will see his profile continue to grow as well. “He’s so ambitious,” she says. “He wants to progress as a nurse. He wants to progress in his career. He wants to advance in nursing and nursing education.”

Venkatesa Perumal doesn’t just look forward to how teaching can help him pay forward to those who have been on a similar journey as his but wants to build further on his dissertation. “I wish to continue the work that I’ve just started with internationally educated nurses, so I’m hoping I will have a program of research that focuses on that,” he says.

Social stigma of tuberculosis needs to be erased, researchers say

African female doctor hold hand of caucasian woman patient give comfort, express health care sympathy, medical help trust support encourage reassure infertile patient at medical visit, closeup view.; Shutterstock ID 1766357462; purchase_order: school of medicine; job: ; client: ; other:

While the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB) may be millions of years old, and the disease was first recorded in human history thousands of years ago, it remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases globally, with only COVID-19 surpassing it in recent years.

TB is also one of the most stigmatized diseases; people are often afraid to visit health facilities, take treatment or share news of diagnosis with others.

With that in mind, eradicating TB will require eliminating the social stigma, which includes a shift in how we frame and talk about the illness and those affected by it, according to York University and international researchers in a new paper published in advance of World Tuberculosis Day, March 24.

Beauty Umana
Beauty Umana
Amrita Daftary
Amrita Daftary

“Policing language is not the goal – it’s not just about changing the way we talk about TB, but what impact that is going to have on the people and communities that are affected,” says lead author and York University postdoctoral researcher Beauty Umana, a Global Health Scholar with the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at the University and a sociolinguist who studies how language can interact with disease treatment. “Empowering, destigmatizing language in TB would give people affected by it the opportunity to be included, and take ownership of the healing process and even the care itself.”

The paper was published March 23 in PLOS Global Public Health under the senior authorship of Amrita Daftary, a TB stigma researcher and founding director of York’s Social Sciences & Health Innovations for Tuberculosis Centre. 

“It’s one of those underdog illnesses. It has not received as much attention on a global scale in terms of funding investment, political commitment, or support as some of the other diseases that have affected more affluent countries and different types of populations. But it’s entirely preventable, it’s curable and treatable,” says Daftary.

Contributor Rhoda Lewa, an independent consultant from Nairobi, Kenya who works on programming and policymaking for HIV, TB and malaria, developed TB in her early 20s while studying at university and knows the stigma of the illness all too well.

“Having to go through the entire treatment regimen without my entire family knowing, without my colleagues knowing, it was not an easy task,” says Lewa. “It takes more than new drugs and new technologies to overcome TB. Language is a very powerful lens. With the power of the tongue, you can either build or destroy, you can encourage or deflate somebody.”

While the researchers say that the language is evolving, a lot of what is used in practice still has negative connotations, including that of criminality. For example, people being referred to as TB “suspects” and “cases,” and those who don’t finish a course of treatment being referred to as “absconders.” Terms such as “vulnerable populations” can also be disempowering.

But, Umana emphasizes, it is not just about individual words, but also how those words are contextualized. For example, treatment management files that are written in a way where the person with TB, rather than the illness itself, is seen to be a problem may create barriers for those experiencing treatment.

The World Health Organization estimates that in 2021, more than 10 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis and 1.4 million died, despite antibiotics being available. In Canada, while rates are overall very low, newcomers and Indigenous communities are greatly overrepresented compared with the general Canadian population. In Canada, and all over the world, tuberculosis is often talked about as an illness of poverty, which further stigmatizes those who develop the illness, the researchers say.

The United Nations has set a Sustainable Development Goal to eradicate TB by 2030.

Umana, Daftary and Lewa, as well as collaborators Jessica Vorstermans (assistant professor, Faculty of Health), James Malar (Community, Rights & Gender Advisor) and Deliana Garcia (Civil Society Organizer for the Americas), were involved in developing a TB language guide called Words Matter to change how people talk about the disease.

“Compassionate language is about people who are affected by tuberculosis seeing themselves in those words and saying ‘You know what? This is my story, this is my life, and I’m going to take full control of it,’” says Umana.

Watch a video of Umana and Lewa explain why compassionate language matters.

Learn more at News @ York.

York research delegation to lead water security panel at UN Water Conference

water droplet

A York delegation will head to New York City March 21 to bring their research expertise to the UN 2023 Water Conference.

The delegates will lead a panel discussion on water security and climate change; the panel is one of a select group of side events included in the program.

Sapna Sharma
Sapna Sharma

“Very few side events led by a university were approved. My colleagues and I are excited for this opportunity on the international stage to demonstrate York’s exemplary work in this field,” said Sapna Sharma, an associate professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, and one of the world’s foremost experts on the effects of climate change on lake ice and water quality.

“Our panel will amplify Indigenous and Black voices, and focus on the challenges that these marginalized communities face with respect to water security globally,” Sharma said. “We will also talk about technological solutions and what people are doing to help solve the water crisis in their own way.”

The York delegation will be joined on the panel by researchers from Toronto Metropolitan University and Queen’s University, as well as representatives from: Global Water Promise, a non-profit organization focused on bringing clean water to developing countries; Stockholm International Water Institute, a foundation for water governance; and mWater, a free data management platform for water and sanitation providers.   

For Sharma, the panel’s model of knowledge co-production is critical to creating the climate resiliency necessary for the future.

“By merging knowledge together, we can come up with better policies and tangible solutions for the water crisis that disproportionately affects racialized women and children,” she said. 

The UN side event is also reflective of the collaborative research approach found at York, including in water-related fields. The York delegates are members of One WATER, a new Organized Research Unit, as well as the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, and CIFAL York, a UN training arm. In addition to Sharma, they include:

  • Satinder Brar, professor, Lassonde School of Engineering
  • Marina Freire Gormaly, assistant professor, Lassonde School of Engineering
  • Ellie Perkins, professor, Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change
  • Mary Bunch, associate professor, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
  • Susan Rogers Van Katwyk, adjunct professor and managing director, Global Strategy Lab
  • Jessica Keeshig-Martin, PhD student, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
  • Hibaq Gelle, MA student, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies

The delegation will be joined at the conference by York University President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda Lenton and Vice-President Research and Innovation Amir Asif. While in New York, the pair will meet with UN and government officials, global partners, and others, to discuss York University’s leadership in water research and sustainability initiatives.

The trip to the UN Water Conference comes on the heels of the release of York’s Microlecture Series in Sustainable Living, SDG Week Canada and coincides with Climate Change Research Month at the University.  

York delegation’s panel, called Water Security, Disasters, and Resilience in a Changing Climate: Challenges, Opportunities, and Solutions, takes place on March 24. The UN Water Conference, co-hosted by the governments of Tajikistan and the Netherlands, takes place March 22 to 24.

Health risks increase for women working rotating shifts, York study finds

nurse doctor female hospital

York University has led the first study to take a comprehensive look at the connection between shift work and frailty among middle-aged and older workers in Canada, and their findings point to negative health outcomes – especially for women on rotating shifts.

The study, which will be published in the May edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found that shift work was associated with frailty compared to those who worked only daytime.

While there is a large body of research suggesting the disruptions to circadian rhythms that shift workers experience are linked to various illnesses, this study was the first to take a “holistic” look at how shift work relates to frailty.

“We cannot ignore the negative health outcomes related to shift work, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, stroke and certain cancers,” says York Faculty of Health PhD student Durdana Khan, a trainee with the York Centre for Aging and Research and Education. “Our study is the first to investigate the relationship between shift work and frailty for middle-aged and older adults.”

For the study, Khan, along with York Professors Heather Edgell, Hala Tamim and Michael Rotondi, and immunologist and epidemiologist Chris Verschoor of the Health Sciences North Research Institute, looked at 48,000 participants across Canada from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging and followed up at three years to measure for frailty.

Frailty is defined as someone’s likelihood towards disease and death. The researchers used an index that looks at 52 factors that can likely lower lifespan, including depression, osteoarthritis, history of heart attacks and mobility issues. Mildly frail people are considered those that have at least five factors. Having at least 11 factors would put people in the “very frail” category.

The study found one in five adult Canadians were involved in shift work, defined as work that falls outside of a 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. schedule. People who had a history of shift work had a higher likelihood of frailty compared to people who only worked daytime hours. More than one in four were found to be mildly frail, and seven per cent were very frail. Women whose longest job consisted of rotating shift work were especially likely to be considered frail, with more than 31 per cent falling in the mildly frail category and nearly 11 per cent classified as very frail.

Circadian rhythms are moderated by sunlight exposure. When sunlight hits the eyes, signals are sent to the pineal gland in the brain, triggering certain hormones and responses that regulate alertness, mood and appetite; a lack of light sets off other responses. In shift workers, this process is dysregulated, and research suggests this disruption can contribute to a host of health issues. 

“Although these findings are preliminary, they suggest that circadian disruption may play an important role in frailty, and this warrants further investigation,” says Khan.

This latest study builds on Khan and Edgell’s earlier research that suggests that shift work may be linked to delayed menopause.

“The circadian rhythm influences your brain’s ability to control your hormones, which can influence your menopause,” explains Edgell. “So, there are a lot of physiological changes that can occur because of shift work.”

While women were more likely to be frail, health research overall shows women to be more resilient to succumbing to disease than men, so this study does not necessarily suggest higher mortality. Still, it does point to sex-based differences that would be important to consider as more women do work outside a 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. schedule, says Khan, who adds that keeping on top of exercise and nutrition can combat some of the negative effects.

“We can’t make shift work go away, but we can reverse frailty to a degree,” she concludes.

Learn more at News @ York.

York researchers advance work on bicycles for social change

bicycle city

Researchers at York University aim to co-develop a Bicycles for Development TransnationalCollective website to mobilize and amplify efforts of those working in the bicycles for development field.

Lyndsay Hayhurst
Lyndsay Hayhurst

The team is led by Faculty of Health Associate Professor Lyndsay Hayhurst, and includes Faculty of Health graduate students Jessica Nachman, Natan Levi, Julia Ferreira Gomes, undergraduate student Isra Iqbal, Development Studies student Tayler Sinclair and former MA student Keiron Cobban. Together, the Bicycles for Development research team has co-created a digital platform as part of that work to host resources, events and discussions for interested researchers, organizations, practitioners and advocates.

The website supports the bicycles and development movement, which promotes a “shared vision of the importance of bicycles in shaping our daily lives, our communities and our future.”

“Ultimately, the objective of the platform is to collaborate with key stakeholders to foster horizontal learning, knowledge dissemination, advocacy and policy change,” said Hayhurst, whose team of co-investigators (Brian Wilson, Mitchell McSweeney, Brad Millington, Cathy van Ingen and Francine Darroch) is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) over the last six years to examine the use of bicycles to achieve community-level, national and global development objectives. Community-based collaborators include Janet Otte, Patrick Eyul and Moses Fred Ogwal (Tororo and Lira, Uganda), Lidieth del Socorro Cruz Centeno (Ometepe Island, Nicaragua) and Charles Chiu (Toronto, Canada).

It hosts a diverse selection of resources – from documentaries and podcasts to research projects and workshops. Visitors who register on the digital platform will have the capability to post resources and contribute to discussions.

Content on the digital platform builds off the expertise of panelists shared during a workshop hosted by the Bicycles for Development research team. 

The virtual workshop “Mobilizing Policy and Advocacy and Change Strategies,” which took place Feb. 21, featured three expert panelists in the fields of transportation, urban and rural mobility, and bicycle-related social justice work: Susan Bornstein (global director, World Bicycle Relief, U.S.); Ingrid Buday (advocate, Safe and Active Streets, Canada); and Louis Uchôa (analyst of institutional development, SampaPé!, Brazil).

A discussion on mobilizing policy advocacy and change strategies helped to inform the development and direction of the digital platform. Those interested can watch a recording of the workshop.

The Bicycles for Development team plans to host an in-person symposium at York in the near future for those interested in sharing their work with others from the Transnational Collective. The website will provide a space to co-create other potential future events for the Collective.