Hello! My name is Laura Kennedy, and I am thrilled to join the exceptional group of students, trainees, and researchers at the STIC Lab. I am joining the lab as a CIHR Health Systems Impact Post Doctoral Fellow supervised by Dr. Cassidy and Dr. Curran. Using a socio-ecological lens, I conduct policy research investigating health promotion within healthcare and its impact on employees, environments and policies. As an embedded scientist at the IWK, I will collaborate with the Women’s Health Program to apply a health equity lens to the commonly used and cited Knowledge-to-Action Framework. This research has the potential to significantly bridge the gap between what we know (knowledge) and what we do (practice), thereby improving health systems to be spaces that augment health for everyone. In 2024, I completed my Doctor of Philosophy from Dalhousie University (Faculty of Health), supervised by Dr. Catherine Mah – Canada Research Chair of Health Promoting Populations. My dissertation studied the everyday actions of managers and point-of-sale staff to determine how they conduct quality improvement for health promotion in retail food environments in light of an organizational Healthy Eating Policy. One of the main findings of this research was that healthcare staff acted as street-level bureaucrats and engaged in small tests of change (PDSA cycles) to prove the value of health promotion interventions within retail services. These PDSA cycles lead to empowerment and trust between management, leadership, and frontline staff. This research has informed my research program of studying health promotion within hospitals. I am a Registered Nurse and have spent the last seven years in the health promotion field, where I have worked with communities to create supportive environments where Nova Scotians live, work and play. One of my favourite work projects I led was a QI health promotion cross-sectional study to strengthen our efforts to address advertising (e.g. fast food) to children in municipal locations, such as bus stops near schools. It is well-founded that child and youth exposure to unhealthy advertising influences behaviour, attitudes, and perceptions. However, the frequency and intensity of advertising children are exposed to on their way to and from school are unknown due to a lack of routine monitoring of community environments. I established international collaborations with researchers from Australia who had completed a similar research project and tailored their data collection techniques to the Canadian landscape. The findings challenged our hypothesis (e.g. more ads for gambling than alcohol) and refined our health promotion messages for internal and external stakeholders, thus improving health promotion practice. This work was published in Dalhousie’s student-led Healthy Populations Journal. I am passionate about conducting research that involves collaborating between academics and researchers. In 2021, I had the opportunity to coordinate the (virtual) Peas in a Pod Practice Exchange with Canadian and Australian researchers and practitioners. This event was a platform to explore how we can increase research capacity within retail food environments research. It included a fireside chat with a Nova Scotia Health dietitian and a public health nutritionist working in an Indigenous Australian store co-op. The main finding of this event was that practitioners were eager to engage in research but faced challenges due to time and resource constraints. Both researchers and practitioners agreed that partnerships must be built before starting a research project. However, they also critiqued grants for not recognizing the time and commitment required to make these partnerships. This experience reinforced my belief in the power of collaboration and the importance of mutual learning partnerships in research. I live in Halifax, NS. On the weekends, you can find me biking along the Rails-to-Trails or hiking in Blue Mountain with my Golden Retriever, Molly. I love trying new coffee shops. My new favourite spot is Café Good Luck in downtown Dartmouth. When I’m not eating baked goods from cafes, I make my own. I am an avid baker and have been baking sourdough bread since the pandemic. Please reach out if you would like to talk about postdoc life, the Health Systems Impact Fellowship or PhD studies. You can reach me at [email protected]. |