Some mental illnesses are passed down through generations, says new UM Canada Research Chair
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, mental health concerns in children and youth have become more prevalent since the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted formative life experiences.
Governments have responded with increased funding for youth who need supports, but there continues to be a lack of understanding of the root causes of mental illness. New research is examining whether mental illnesses are passed down through generations and the implications for policymakers and care providers working with children.
Dr. Amani Hamad, assistant professor of community health sciences at the Max Rady College of Medicine in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, is studying the multi-generational occurrences of mental illnesses and other chronic conditions. She will now be supported through the Canada Research Chair program (Tier 2), allowing her to continue and expand upon her work.
Her appointment as a Canada Research Chair in population data science and data curation comes with $100,000 annually in funding over five years, with the possibility of renewal for a further five years.
Hamad earned her PhD at UM’s College of Pharmacy. Her research focuses on analyzing administrative data (routinely collected, anonymized government data, such as records of doctor visits, diagnoses, hospitalizations and prescriptions) in order to construct family health histories for the Manitoba population and investigate the intergenerational transfer of mental illness.
She will use data stored in the Manitoba Population Research Data Repository held at UM’s Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. This world-class repository includes records of Manitobans’ contacts with the social service, justice and education systems, as well as the health-care system. It’s a unique and powerful resource for answering questions about the well-being of the entire Manitoba population, and especially about health care, public health and the social determinants of health.
“Manitoba is unique with an exceptional collection of administrative data that is unmatched in its comprehensiveness. This repository is one of very few in the world, and the only one in North America, that allows for the linkage of both health and non-health data for the entire population and across generations,” says Hamad.
Her research goals are to 1) build and document population cohorts that are linked to health and social data and ready to use in research; 2) develop and test methods (including machine learning methods) to assist researchers in accurately identifying chronic diseases and family disease histories; and 3) study the effects of prescription medications on mental illness in children.
The third research goal addresses an important knowledge gap. The much-anticipated results will inform clinicians on how they can safely prescribe medications to children with mental illnesses.
Hamad’s research program aims to transform complex administrative data, such as records of patient encounters with the health-care system, into standardized research-ready data, making it easier to use and reuse for research while ensuring that it is of high quality. This is an ideal time for this research with the global move toward making timely administrative data research-ready, comprehensive and cost effective to expedite studies and efficiently produce new insights about population well-being.
“Congratulations to Dr. Hamad for receiving this prestigious appointment that reinforces the strength and breadth of health and machine learning research excellence at the University of Manitoba,” says UM Vice President (Research and International) Dr. Mario Pinto. “Her significant contributions to knowledge and the development of data will be invaluable in helping advance the collective understanding of the social determinants of health in populations.”
More information on Hamad’s work can be found in these open-source articles: The Intergenerational Transfer of Mental Disorders: A Population-Based Multignereational Linkage Study, Data Resources Profile: The Manitoba Multigenerational Cohort and Developing a Prediction Model of Children Asthma Risk using Population-based Family History Health Records. See her speak about her research in this CTV interview on CTV Morning Live: Winnipeg.
Hamad is a member of the Pediatrics Special Interest Group at the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology, the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the International Population Data Linkage Network.
She acknowledges her mentors who supported her as an immigrant scholar from Jordan and plans to continue mentoring other new researchers as she develops her research program at UM.
Renewed Canada Research Chair
Dr. Jorg Stetefeld (department of chemistry), Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in structural biology and biophysics, has been renewed through to April 2031. More information on Stetefeld’s work can be found on The Jorg Stetefeld Research Laboratory website.
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.