Principal Investigator: Nafissa Ismail

Eighty percent of premature heart disease cases can be prevented through healthy living and healthy behavioural choices such as eating well, exercising, and controlling well-known risk factors. Since brain health is an important contributor to heart health, links between poor mental health and higher heart disease risk have been found. This team will conduct a global study that will identify the social, cultural, environmental, and demographic factors that impede healthy behaviours in individuals of various age groups, living in various parts of the world and from various cultural backgrounds. Identifying the factors that hinder healthy living will help to develop age-, sex/gender/intersectionality-, and culturally-relevant interventions and messaging to help individuals engage in healthy living in concrete and tangible steps to prevent brain-heart illnesses.

Principal Investigator: Smita Pakhale

Marginalized groups, such as homeless and racialized individuals, have been overlooked by studies that investigate the impact of cannabis and poor mental health on the risk for cardiovascular disease. This knowledge gap is concerning since marginalized groups experience greater rates of mental illness, cardiovascular diseases, and are more likely to abuse drugs relative to the general population. Using a community based research approach, this team will pursue a richer understanding of the relationship between cannabis use, mental illness, and cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., diet, physical activity) in marginalized populations. The findings of the research will inform health care provision and public health services for marginalized populations.

Principal Investigator: Sheldon Tobe

Diseases of the brain and heart often occur together, and affect over 6 million Canadians. This team will create a brain-heart clinical practice guideline (BH-CPG) to generate, implement, and then evaluate best practice recommendations to guide both clinicians and patients in the detection, prevention, and treatment of people with these conditions. These recommendations will be complementary to existing Canadian guidelines groups within the c-change collaborative. The bh-cpg has initiated a process gathering ideas from clinical experts and patients with lived experience in parallel, considering principles of equity, diversity, inclusion and social accountability, to address sex, gender, ethnicity/race, cultural, accessibility, and socioeconomic factors, to best implement the practice recommendations. This program is bringing together experts from across the spectrum of health professions emphasizing primary care, together with people with lived experience using co-development practices. Working with indigenous communities the bh-cpg follows tcps 2 and the principles of ownership, control, access, and possession (ocap) to guide the study of the new guideline.