The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) and the NOSM faculty Union (Unit 1 of Ontario Public Service Employees Union [OPSEU] Local 677) are pleased to announce the ratification of their fourth collective agreement, covering full-time faculty, professional librarians, and professional staff at the School.

The faculty Union’s Members voted in favour of the new collective agreement on July 23, 2015. The agreement was ratified by NOSM’s Board of Directors on July 31, 2015.

The agreement covers three years and is in effect from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2018. It provides for annual wage increases of 1 % and $1150 in the first year, followed by 1.5 % in the second and 1.75 % in the final year, with provision for Lakehead University and Laurentian University comparator adjustments in years 2 and 3. The agreement also includes enhancements to various components of the benefit package over the three-year agreement as well as a number of other improvements.

Formal negotiations began in February 2015, led by chief negotiators Dr. Hermann Falter (NOSM) and Dr. Geoffrey Hudson (faculty Union). NOSM and its Board of Directors look forward to the continuation of a strong partnership with OPSEU Unit 1, and are appreciative of their Members’ contributions to the School’s vision of Innovative Education and Research for a Healthier North. The faculty Union is committed to its ongoing professional and productive relationship with the Board of Directors.

For more information, kindly contact:

news@nosm.ca

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) is pleased to announce the School’s Northern Ontario Dietetic Internship Program (NODIP) has received full accreditation status from the Dietitians of Canada (DC) until 2022. Thanks to its reputation for high quality of education, NODIP was recently selected by the Dietitians of Canada to be the first post-degree internship of all Canadian dietetic education programs to be assessed using the new Partnership for Dietetic Education and Practice (PDEP) Accreditation Standards.

A three-person surveyor team from Dietitians of Canada visited NOSM on May 3-4, 2015. Dietitians of Canada is the national accrediting organization for programs in dietetic education. For NOSM to receive accreditation from DC, the School’s education and training programs must meet nationally established standards. At the conclusion of the site visit, the DC accreditation team applauded both NODIP and its Manager, Denise Raftis’ leadership. The accreditation team reported that NODIP students and preceptors felt engaged, supported, and grateful to be involved in the program.

“Receiving official accreditation from the Dietitians of Canada is recognition that the Northern Ontario Dietetic Internship Program is successfully preparing students for practice. Our students are receiving a high quality education that results in the graduates of our program providing high quality dietetic service to their patients and clients,” said Dr. David Marsh, NOSM Deputy Dean. “The accreditation team was impressed with the morale in all areas of the program. The success of NODIP is a testament to the excellence of NODIP’s staff, preceptors, and dietetic interns.”

NODIP provides students with an opportunity to participate in distributed and community-based experiences. This allows dietetic interns to acquire the range of comprehensive skills preparing them for dietetic practice. With placements across Northern Ontario in locations such as regional and small rural hospitals, public health units, family health teams, and Francophone and Aboriginal communities, students are given insights into the geographic, demographic, and cultural realities of practising in the region.

Since the program accepted its first students in 2007, NODIP has trained 99 dietetic interns in more than 35 communities in the North. Of those, 74 percent have chosen to practice in rural or Northern communities. That means that 64 dietitians are now increasing access to dietetic services in rural and Northern settings that have faced historical shortages.

For more information, please visit: www.nosm.ca/nodip.

A new research project has received funding from the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Orientated Research (SPOR) Support Unit to take a closer look at diabetes within Ontario’s First Nations peoples, and help develop new programs and policies for those living with the disease.

Dr. Kristen Jacklin, Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Human Sciences Division at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) at Laurentian University is one of three principal investigators leading the research. The team’s project Reducing the burden of diabetes on First Nations people in Ontario: Using population-level data to inform policy and practice has been awarded a $770,000 IMPACT Award from the Ontario SPOR SUPPORT Unit (OSSU). Dr. Jacklin will work alongside Dr. Mike Green (Queen’s University) and Dr. Jennifer Walker (Nipissing University) in leading this three-year project.

The research approach involves a formal partnership with the Chiefs of Ontario, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Studies (ICES) and the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research (CRaNHR) at Laurentian University. Working with key stakeholders and a patient advisory group, the team will gather data on diabetes, assess and analyze it, and then use that information for the betterment of the First Nations communities in Ontario.

“The complexity of the delivery of health services in First Nations coupled with a lack of outcome data has been a hindrance in evaluating the impact of diabetes programs and policies in First Nations in Ontario to date,” says Dr. Jacklin. “Working under the guidance of the Chiefs of Ontario and the patient advisory group, we will now be able to examine, for the first time, the relationship between particular programs and policies on diabetes outcomes. This research is particularly significant to the First Nations in Northern Ontario who can face significant barriers when trying to access diabetes services in rural and remote communities, and who have greater difficulties accessing healthy fresh foods necessary for diabetes care management.”

“We will be producing a comprehensive assessment of diabetes, its complications and the health services use associated with that across the province for First Nations people,” says Dr. Green, the project lead. “We are going to be looking at their access to care and we’ll be studying specific policies that the stakeholder groups bring up. We’re going to be working very closely with them in a very integrated way in order to turn that data into information and knowledge that is useful to them in their decision-making about program delivery and policy making and to improve outcomes.”

“I am hopeful that this project will not only provide us with much needed information on diabetes trends, outcomes, and health service use in First Nations, but that it will also create a road map for what can be done through policy, programming, and intervention research to improve diabetes outcomes,” adds Dr. Jacklin.

The funding through the OSSU award, one of only seven being handed out, will help address the substantially rising rates of diabetes across the province, particularly within the First Nations population. Some of the complications associated with diabetes include renal failure, cardiovascular disease and amputations.

“Reducing diabetes in our communities is a priority and I am hopeful that this research with the involvement of our First Nation diabetes patients will make this research meaningful and real. Hearing the voice of First Nations individuals who are living with diabetes tell their stories will be important in evaluating those policies that affect the lives of First Nations citizens in Ontario,” states Grand Chief Patrick Madahbee, Chair of the Ontario Chiefs Committee on Health.

The IMPACT Awards are designed to bring together diverse stakeholders-patients, clinicians, researchers, policy makers, knowledge users, industry and other health sector participants-to develop and implement promising research opportunities that improve patient health outcomes and advance our health system. The OSSU is a collaboration across 12 leading Ontario health research centres (including CRaNHR at Laurentian University), and is jointly funded by the Government of Ontario and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Kiri Benson
Writer, Communications
Northern Ontario School of Medicine
Phone:          705-662-7169
Email:           kbenson@nosm.ca