Themes:

Public Participation

The theme -Engagement -considers the concept of active public participation as reflected in the Alma Ata Declaration as requiring and promoting “maximum community and individual self-reliance and participation in the planning, organization, operation and control of primary health care, making fullest use of local, national and other available resources; and to this end develops through appropriate education the ability of communities to participate.”  It also directly relates to the theme of knowledge translation in research.

Reference: http://www.who.int/publications/almaata_declaration_en.pdf

 In research, engagement is a critical strategy involving end-users and other stakeholders in the entire research process using integrated knowledge translation strategies

Research Funding

Patient/Caregiver Engagement in Community-Based Research on Older Adults

The overall goal of the project is to investigate the most effective way to use the existing strengths of a community to design community-based health-related programming, and to measure the impact...

 Completed

 June 2016-December 2017

Co-Primary Investigator

Caring for Seniors with Multiple Chronic Conditions: A Team Approach to e-Health Supported Transitional Care

The proposed study will focus on learning about how to best implement a new model of interprofessional, community-based stroke rehabilitation so that it becomes normalized in practice. It will also...

 Active

 Sept. 1, 2016-Aug. 31, 2018

Co-Primary Investigator

The Aging, Community and Health Research Unit (ACHRU) Community Partnership Program for Diabetes Self-Management for Older Adults - Canada.

Purpose: To further test the Aging, Community and Health Research Unit (ACHRU) - Community Partnership Program (CPP) in diverse primary care and community settings, with diverse populations and across...

 Active

 2018-2023

Co-Primary Investigator

Primary Health Care as the Foundation for Health System Performance, Integration and Sustainability: INSPIRE-PHC-2 - Building Primary Health Care and Public Health Collaboration with and for the Community

A prospective case study design will be used to explore the implementation and outcomes of an intervention to stimulate a primary care and public health collaboration in an urban neighbourhood in...

 Active

 2018-2020

Primary Investigator

Patient/Caregiver Engagement in Community-Based Research on Older Adults

The goal of our proposed project is to evaluate a) our engagement approaches and b) the impacts of involving older adult patients and family caregivers in the design and implementation of...

 2016-2018

Primary Investigator

Successful Knowledge Translation from the Perspective of Diverse Knowledge Users: An exploratory study

The aim of the Aging, Community and Health Research Unit is to promote optimal aging at home. The population includes older adults with many chronic diseases and their family caregivers. The program...

 Active

 2016-2017

Co-Primary Investigator

Home & Community Care with a focus on transitions between institutional and community care settings. Ontario SPOR Support Unit – IMPACT Award Home & Community Care

This is a pragmatic effectiveness-implementation trial to evaluate a hospital-to-home transitional care intervention compared to usual care for older adults with multiple chronic conditions and...

 Active

 Feb. 1, 2016- Sept. 30, 2016

Co-Investigator

Scholarly Work

Health in the Hubs

The McMaster University School of Nursing (SON) is dedicated to improving the health of residents in our local communities and fulfilling the School’s mission of community engaged scholarship.

 Active

Projects

Computers and the Internet: Tools for youth empowerment

Youth are often disenfranchised in their communities and may feel they have little voice. Since computers are an important aspect of youth culture, they may offer solutions to increasing youth participation in communities. This study involved public health nurses to support the school-based community development project.

 Completed

Articles

Designing, Implementing and Evaluating Mobile Health Technologies for Managing Chronic Conditions in Older Adults: A scoping review

The purpose of this study was to conduct a scoping review of current practices and recommendations for designing, implementing, and evaluating mHealth technologies to support the management of chronic conditions in community-dwelling older adults.

 Completed

Articles

Enabling Youth Participation in School-based Computer-supported Community Development

Schools are a main setting for health promotion for youth. A one year qualitative case study was undertaken in an inner-city, Canadian school. It explored factors that enabled and constrained youth in the process of a school-based computer-supported community development (CD) project. This paper reports on Dr. Ruta Valaitis' PhD thesis results.

 Completed

Articles

Health TAPESTRY: Co-designing interprofessional primary care programs for older adults using the persona-scenario method

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a modified approach to the persona-scenario method was used to co-design a complex primary health care intervention (Health TAPESTRY) by and for older adults and providers and the value added of this approach.

 Completed

Articles

Invited Member: Community Advisory Neighbourhood Profiles Reference Group, Hamilton ON

Invited Member: Community Advisory Neighbourhood Profiles Reference Group, Hamilton ON

 Completed

Committees

Knowledge Translation, Research Uptake Strategies: Aging Community and Health Research Unit

The Aging Community Health Research Unit is a large multi-jurisdictional team which has received funding (over $5 Million) from CIHR and the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care.

 Completed

Projects

Member of the Tackling Poverty Together (TPT) Advisory Committee, Hamilton Community Foundation

Dr. Ruta Valaitis was a member of the Hamilton Community Foundation (HCF) advisory and review committee from 2008 - 2010 for community grant related to the Tackling Poverty Together: Building Strong Neighbourhoods program. In 2011, Dr. Valaitis was a member of the Tackling Poverty Together Advisory Committee.

 Completed

Committees

Optimizing the Meaningful Engagement of Older Adults With Multimorbidity and Their Caregivers as Research Partners: A Qualitative Study.

he objective of this graduate student's study was to examine how researchers can best engage and support older adults with multimorbidity and informal friend or family caregivers of older adults with multimorbidity as research partners in health care research teams.

 Completed

Articles

Persona-scenario Exercise for Co-designing Primary Care Interventions

The persona-scenario exercise, an alternative to traditional strategies, originated from the field of human computer interface design. This project used this methodology adapted by Dr. Valaitis from participatory approaches used in eHealth. This article describes how persona-scenario exercises were applied in the codesign of the complex primary health care intervention TAPESTRY (Teams Advancing Patient Experiences: Strengthening Quality).

 Completed

Articles

Protocol for a program of research from the Aging, Community and Health Research Unit: Promoting optimal aging at home for older adults with multimorbidity

The goal of the Aging, Community and Health Research Unit (ACHRU) is to promote optimal aging at home for older adults with multimorbidity (≥2 chronic conditions) and to support their family/friend caregivers. This protocol paper reports the rationale and plan for this patient-oriented, cross-jurisdictional research program.

 Completed

Articles

Research Summary: Building Collaboration and the Social Environment for the Vanier Towers Community

Deliberative Dialogue Issue Brief. Hamilton, ON. 2019.

 Completed

Reports

Stop, Look and Listen: An interactive guide to working with communities

This was a CD-ROM program designed to teach community health nursing students and other professionals about the process of community action. It focused on the principles of primary health care, community assessment and community development. Child pedestrian injury prevention was the main issue addressed in this programme

 Completed

Projects

Street Smarts ↔ Book Smarts: Three Neighborhoods and One University School of Nursing Partnering for Health

This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of an interdisciplinary undergraduate course embedded within a campus–community partnership initiative involving McMaster University School of Nursing, and three urban priority neighborhoods in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The experiential course focuses on building knowledge and skills in community participation and community improvements for health and continues to be offered today. This primary health care collaboration between the campus and three Hamilton neighbourhoods was led by Dr. Valaitis and supported by the Health in the Hubs team.

 Completed

Articles

Tailoring Online Health Promotion: A Toolkit for Communities

Tailoring Online Health Promotion: A Toolkit for Communities has been produced to share our learning and experiences in working to build a health promotion web site (www.youthspark.ca) to meet local needs by and for rural youth in Huron County, Ontario Canada. The Toolkit is loosely organized according to the phases of project development that we experienced in the YouthSpark project.

 Completed

Reports

Tailoring Online Health Promotion: A Toolkit for Communities

Tailoring Online Health Promotion: A Toolkit for Communities: This toolkit was produced based on our experience and evaluation of working with public health staff and youth in a rural community to build a health promotion website for youth by youth.

 Completed

Projects

They Don’t Trust Us; We’re Just Kids”: Views about community from predominantly female inner city youth

The cornerstones of health promotion are the concepts of empowerment and community participation. There has been little research, however, on how these concepts are actualized within a youth population and even less from a gender perspective.

 Completed

Articles

Students

Picture Name Degree Ruta's Role Thesis Topic More Info
Dr. Rebecca Ganann Dr. Rebecca Ganann Post-Doctoral Fellow Co-Supervisor Integrated knowledge exchange with knowledge users in community-based interventions involving extensive patient and caregiver engagement in the community More Info.
Sandra Isaacs Sandra Isaacs PhD Supervisor How community-based services work together to address the primary health care needs of recent immigrant children More Info.