Violence researched

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research announced on Jan. 28 that they will be funding centres for research on violence at three Canadian universities.

Over five years, the Centre for Intercultural Research on Prevention of Gender Violence at the University of Ottawa (UO), the Centre for Research Development in Gender, Mental Health and Violence Across the Lifespan at McMaster University and the Centre for the Study of Gender, Social Inequities and Mental Health at Simon Fraser University (SFU) will be receiving $6 million in funding from the Canadian government.

The proposals from the winning research centres cover the spectrum of focus for their studies, including innovative approaches to solving the issue of violence.

The research team at UO, headed by Neil Andersson, will use the funds to concentrate on how gendered violence relates to migrating minorities, particularly in Canada.

“We will focus on the positive roles of parenting and cultures of origin to prevent gender violence,” said Andersson.

“Although the pressures of moving to a city can cut people off from their culture of origin, we believe those cultures can still be protective – we have to work out how to make them more protective in relation to gender violence,” he added.

The centre at McMaster will focus its funding on how violence impacts children and intimate partners.

“With family violence affecting at least 30 per cent of Canadians, there is a pressing need for a coherent and integrated approach to the problem of family violence and its mental health outcomes, and to look at this for both males and females,” said Harriet MacMillan of McMaster University, one of the principle investigators for that project.

Marina Morrow, the principle investigator for the program at SFU, said, “The Centre for Research on Gender and Social Disparities in Mental Health and Addictions aims to create a better understanding of why disparities in mental health and addictions outcomes persist so that appropriate programs, policies and interventions can be developed and implemented, ultimately leading to improved mental health for women and men, girls and boys in Canada and internationally.”

Morrow explained that the work of the centre is dependent on “the support of innovative research, knowledge exchange and training activities.”