May 2025
Spotlight on POPCORN’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigeneity Team
POPCORN is so grateful for Dr. Patricia Li and Dr. Ananya Tina Banerjee’s leadership and guidance, along with their passionate team: Tiffany Kim, Vivian Qiang, Josh Swain, and Parker Tope. Having a dedicated EDI+I team has brought added value to POCORN.
Research
The team has supported two qualitative descriptive studies led by Master’s of Public Health students, Kari Guo and Mariane Saroufim, to:
Understand provider perspectives and experiences accessing language and interpretation services in pediatric healthcare settings and how best to support healthcare providers with respect to the language needs of patients, parents and families in pediatric healthcare.
Explore the motivations and experiences of researcher and community partner perspectives on conducting community-based participatory research on pediatric health during COVID-19.
The manuscripts are in preparation, and the language and interpretation study is being presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in Honolulu in April 2025.
Consultations & Engagement
The EDI+I team has been available to support research projects and has participated in the Governance and Scientific committees to ensure the commitment and implementation of equity, diversity, and inclusion principles across POPCORN projects.
The team has also supported the completion of an environmental scan of Indigenous programs and services across pediatric hospitals (initially funded by a CIHR Planning grant by NPA P. Li and supported by the Canadian Paediatric Inpatient Research Network). This subsequently led to a successful CIHR Planning and Dissemination grant (led by NPA Amy Shawanda and co-PA P. Li, supported by POPCORN) to share the learnings from this scan and create a Community of Practice of Indigenous leads, healthcare providers, and staff from the pediatric hospital's Indigenous programs. The environmental scan will be presented at the International Meeting on Indigenous Child Health (IMICH; Winnipeg 2025), Canadian Paediatric Society annual meeting (Quebec City 2025), and the International Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Conference (Adelaide, Australia 2025). The Community of Practice will have an inaugural meeting in Winnipeg during the IMICH meeting.
The team, led by NPA A. Shawanda and co-PA P. Li, supported by POPCORN, also submitted a CIHR Healthy Youth grant to support the co-design, co-implement, and co-evaluate culturally safe and meaningful engagement of Indigenous and marginalized youth in research. The results of this competition will be available in July 2025.
Learning Sessions
The team offered 2 learning sessions: Principles of Belonging in Pediatric Care and Research, where critical discussions on incorporating anti-oppressive practices, equity, and cultural safety in health research were discussed. Over 50 POPCORN collaborators participated. An excellent Participant Guide was shared with all POPCORN members to provide important terms and definitions, as well as descriptions of the case studies that were worked through during the training. This learning session has been/will be presented at national and international conferences (2024 Canadian Conference on Global Health, Vancouver; World Congress of Epidemiology 2024, Cape Town; Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting, Honolulu, April 2025). It has also been delivered to other researchers and knowledge mobilization teams, including TREKK (Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids), the McMaster Health Research Services team, and will be delivered to the recently funded CIHR network, RareKids-CAN.
They also coordinated with the Indigenous Primary Health Care Council to offer a two-part webinar series on First Nations, Inuit and Métis Indigenous Research and Indigenous Data Sovereignty. The sessions helped participants learn more about Indigenous data governance principles and provided guidance on best practices for engaging and working with knowledge products about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis populations in a safe, protected, and appropriate manner.
The team was also invited to present at the Children’s Healthcare Canada Child Health Equity learning series on Inclusive research and diverse community engagement: perspectives and considerations. This was attended by participants across Canada.
Additionally, the team has compiled online resources to support inclusive research, available on the POPCORN website.
We look forward to continuing learning and growth in the years to come.
To learn more about ways to get involved in POPCORN research, please email Michelle Quinlan at michelle.quinlan@sickkids.ca.