UTC
Since early June, more than 7,000 refugees and displaced persons have arrived in the African nation of Uganda, most fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Even in the midst of a pandemic, we see people being displaced,” says the University of Toronto’s Carmen Logie, an associate professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.
Logie’s usual research focus is on understanding and developing interventions to address stigma and other social factors associated with HIV and sexually transmitted infections. She has long placed a special emphasis on refugees and displaced persons in countries like Haiti and Uganda.
“We already have a study in Kampala on urban refugees but we had to put it on hold when COVID-19 forced everyone into lockdown,” says Logie, who is Canada Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Social Justice With Marginalized Populations. “Our community partners in Kampala identified a lack of information tailored to preventing COVID-19 for young people in their languages. We think using social media tools will be an innovative and effective way to hear about their experiences and knowledge of the virus and to get them the information they need.”
Logie’s research team is one of 139 across Canada that are sharing more than $109 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), awarded through its second rapid research funding competition. Included are eight teams from U of T and 18 at the university’s partner hospitals. All are focused on COVID-19 research.
“The University of Toronto is grateful to CHRD for this vital investment, which will enable our researchers to contribute to the global effort to perceive COVID-19,” says university professor Ted Sargent, vice president of research and innovation at the university. Toronto and strategic initiatives. “It should be noted that this investment focuses on projects, such as Professor Logie’s, where there will be collaboration with researchers from low- and middle-income countries.”
Logie works with Richard Lester, a professor at the University of British Columbia, and Gabrielle Serafini, who developed WelTel, a text messaging app that is helping healthcare professionals with patients.
There are approximately 1.4 million refugees in Uganda, the largest refugee-hosting nation in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 80,000 living in Kampala.
Logie notes that adolescents and youth comprise nearly half of the world’s refugee and displaced person population.
“In humanitarian settings, the needs of people are often not understood or met,” she says. “This is also true in pandemics and, especially, with young people and adolescents. For example, we found that hand hygiene studies in Uganda did not include adolescents. They were aimed at adults and children.
“We know that adolescents have their own lived experiences and challenges, so we need to understand that and enable them to express themselves.”
With this in mind, Logie, his collaborators at UBC and refugee agencies at the apartment in Kampala will adapt the WelTel generation to engage refugee youth and adolescents. The goal, Says Logie, is to help them “talk about the effect of COVID-19 on their lives.” We’ll extend an organization chat app to send data and allow other young people to apply this data to their lives. »»
While the pandemic has exacerbated disorders such as isolation and poverty around the world, it has an effect on the logie study population in Uganda that has been particularly severe.
“In refugee camps in northern Uganda, for example, the only places where they had to interact with others and remain busy in the face of widespread unemployment were places like churches, networking centers and shops,” he says. “But now that COVID-19 has forced others to stay at home or in refugee camps, they are suffering with isolation.”
Equally concerned is having an effect on food insecurity.
“For young refugees in Kampala, before COVID-19, we discovered that 70% did not have enough to eat. Now our spouse agencies say it’s even worse with the lockdown that doesn’t allow other people to work,” Logie says.
“This is true all over the world, however, among refugees in Kampala, they want to make cash every day until that day. The effect of confinement is therefore normal: it puts other people in another size of poverty.”
The following researchers from the University of Toronto and its spouse hospitals have obtained CRSC investments for COVID-19-like projects:
Philip Awadalla, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research; Department of Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Medicine; Monitor population cohorts for COVID19 prevalence and results in Canada (SUPPORT-Canada)
Angela Cheung, University Health Network; Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health; COVID-19 Prospective Canadian Cohort Study (CanCOV)
Vladimir Dzavik, University Health Network; Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine; Semaglutide to myocardia-related lesions in patients with COVID-19 (SEMPATICO): a randomized exploratory controlled clinical trial
Andrea Gershon, Sunnybrook Research Institute; IHPME at Dalla Lana School of Public Health; CovidFree – Home: Development and validation of a multivariate prediction style of deterioration in patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who are cared for at home
Daniel Grace, Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Engage-COVID-19: A combination of strategies on the biomedical, behavioral and psychosocial facets of the COVID-19 pandemic among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men in Canada
Astrid Guttmann, hospital for children with health problems; IHPME at Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Deferred care results in Canadian children and young people: COVID-19 risk measurement and mitigation
Joanna Henderson, Center for Addiction and Mental Health; Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine; Youth intellectual aptitude and substance use in the context of COVID-19: a multi-component programme for young people and immediate action
Angela Jerath, Sunnybrook Research Institute; Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Faculty of Medicine; Sedation with volatile anesthetic agents in patients with COVID-19 critical in intensive care: effects on ventilatory parameters and survival (SAVE-UCI trial)
Kevin Kain, University Health Network; Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology of the Faculty of Medicine; Randomized trial to determine the effect of vitamin D and zinc supplements to improve remedy outcomes in COVID-19 patients in Mumbai, India
Murray Krahn, University Health Network; IHPME at Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Response of provincial health systems to COVID-19: provision of health services and costs, first nations and other populations
Douglas Lee, University Health Network; IHPME at Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Improved Canadian studies on the effects of the new SARS-CoV-2 analytics: the Corona consortium
Jordan Lerner-Ellis, Sinai Health System; Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology of the Faculty of Medicine; Implementation of serological and molecular equipment to determine the control of COVID-19 patients
Christoph Licht, hospital for children with health problems; Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology of the Faculty of Medicine; A central role of the vascular endothelium in the pathogenesis of COVID-19
Jun Liu, Department of Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Medicine; Development and effective vaccines opposed to COVID-19
Carmen Logie, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Service; Kukaa Salama (Staying Safe): a pre-social whatsApp trial to develop COVID-19 prevention practices with urban refugees and displaced youth in Kampala, Uganda
David McMillen, Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, T Mississauga’s U; Development of a yeast-based immunoessai for SARS-CoV-2 serological tests for cheap production
Sharmistha Mishra, Hospital of San Miguel; IHPME at Dalla Lana School of Public Health; The evaluation of the increase has an effect on what we did when we prioritize what to do next: a modelling review of multi-provincial interventions that use population-based data
Peter Newman, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Service; A randomized, multicenter, foreign-controlled trial of a brief electronic health intervention to develop protective wisdom and behaviors in COVID-19, and decrease pandemic tension in LGBT people.
Deborah O’Connor, Sinai Health System; Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine; Can COVID-19 and maternal antibodies opposed to SARS-CoV-2 be transmitted to human milk? Implications for breastfeeding and the breast milk bank
Keith Pardee, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy; Portable, Low-cost Hardware for De-centralized COVID-19 Diagnostics for Canada, Colombia and Ecuador
Robert Rottapel, University Health Network; department of immunology in the Faculty of Medicine; Development of a Predictive Serologic Test for Cytopathogenic Auto-antibodies in COVID-19 Patients
Darrel Tan, Unity Health Toronto; IHPME in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health; COVID-19 Ring-based Prevention trial with Lopinavir/ritonavir (CORIPREV-LR)
Amol Verma, Unity Health Toronto; IHPME in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health; The COVID-19 Hospital Analytics Laboratory: Improving the Clinical, Organizational, and System Response to COVID-19
Tania Watts, department of immunology in the Faculty of Medicine; Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Adaptive Immunity to SARS-CoV-2
Daniel Werb, Unity Health Toronto; IHPME in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health; Rapidly Assessing theImpact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Response on Clinical and Social Outcomes, Service Utilization, and the Unregulated Drug Supply Experienced by People Who Use Drugs in Toronto
Jia Xue, Inwentash-Factor Social Work School: Largest COVID-19 Domestic Violence Quarantine Threat in Canada: Strengthening Social Media Collaborations between Nonprofits to Save Lives
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