Centre on Aging Research Affiliates
The following is a list of the current research affiliates of the Centre on Aging, University of Manitoba. A number of our research affiliates are also from the University of Winnipeg, Brandon University, and Athabasca University.

For more specific information on their current projects or areas of interest, please click on the research affiliate's name.

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA RESEARCH AFFILIATES

*listed alphabetically by last name

NAME

 FACULTY/DEPARTMENT

AREAS OF INTEREST

Benedict Albensi

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics

  • Synaptic Plasticity
  • Memory Dysfunction
Brenda Austin Smith Faculty of Arts, Department of English, Film, and Theatre
  • Intergenerational responses to film; seniors and popular culture; particular interest in film melodrama.
  • Specialization in: Film and emotion; gender and media; audience studies; cinema history and cultural memory; narrative rhetoric in fiction and film; melodrama; Henry James; adaptation

Daniel Bailis

Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology

  •  Area of social psychology and health
  • Currently investigating goal conflict as a barrier to regular physical activity
  • Worked in the area of healthy aging and has a long-term interest in topics such as perceived control, collective self-esteem, and social comparison

Ruth Barclay-Goddard

Faculty of Medicine, School of Medical Rehabilitation

  • Health related quality of life post stroke
  • Response shift in health related quality of life
  • Outcome measurement
  • Participation post stroke
  • Community ambulation
  • Meta-analysis
  • Structural equation modeling

Robert G. Biscontri

I.H. Asper School of Business, Department of Accounting and Finance

  • Neural networks
  • Earnings management
  • Financial distress
  • Accounting education

Danielle Bouchard

Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management

  • How to decrease rate of inactivity the role of age in lifestyle modifications
  • How obesity affects the physical capacity in older adults

Shawn Bugden

Faculty of Pharmacy

  • Evidence-based healthcare and biostatistics
  • Pharmacoeconomics and health outcomes
  • Drug use evaluation and safety (pharmacoepidemiology)
  • Health policy and regulatory affairs
  • Knowledge translation and academic detailing
  • Biomedical ethics
  • Pharmacy practice
  • Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and interprofessional education

Judith Chipperfield

Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology

  • Conducts research in the Laboratory for Aging and Health Research (LAHR) to examine psychological aspects of health and illness in later life
  • In the Emotion, Motivation, and Control Research (EMCOR) Group, she is studying emotions, motivation, and perceived control among younger and older populations

Donna Collins

Faculty of Medicine, School of Medical Rehabilitation
  • Wheelchairs and Seating
  • Independent Living and Housing Options
  • Seniors Housing
  • Community Service Delivery
Juliette Cooper Faculty of Medicine, School of Medical Rehabilitation
  • Evidence-based practice
  • Outcome measures
  • Uptake of research by clinicians
Roisin Cossar Faculty of Arts, Department of History
  • Religion and society
  • Late medieval Italy
  • Urban history
  • Gender
Kelly Cranswick Faculty of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences
  • Data housed in Statistics Canada Research Data Centres
Cecilia Dong Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Restorative Dentistry
  • Dental Caries Diagnosis
  • Dental Materials Research
  • Dental Implant Prosthodontics
  • Teaching & Learning Techniques
  • Prosthodontics
  • Oral Implants
  • Metal-Ceramic Dental Materials
Malcolm Doupe Faculty of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences
  • Utilization of health care services by older adults
  • Alternative care strategies for this population
Christopher J. Fries Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology
  • Health lifestyles and behaviour
  • Critical public health
  • Social determinants of health
  • Complementary/alternative medicine (CAM)
Marcia Friesen Faculty of Engineering, Department of Design Engineering
Don Fuchs Faculty of Social Work
  • Group work
  • Social network intervention
  • Self-help and informal helping
  • Community development/organization
  • Social planning
  • Organizational
  • Program evaluation
  • Child abuse prevention
Laura Funk Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology
  • Responsibility, health and care/support across the life course
  • Aspects of the sociology of health, aging, and family as well as the social determinants of health, including social support and care work
  • Current focus: family care provided to older, chronically and terminally ill individuals, understood within broader social, cultural and structural contexts
  • Family caregiver experiences and interactions with home care system; personal care homes
Ruby Grymonpre Faculty of Pharmacy
  • Targets optimal medication use by the aged population including the role of the community pharmacist
  • Rural health and aging
  • Interprofessional education
Julie Guard Faculty of Arts, Labour Studies Program
  • History of popular movements, radical history, women's history, labour history
  • Canadian social history, history and construction of class; ethnic, racialized and gendered identities
  • Manitoba's call centres
  • Union renewal in Canada
Lorna Guse Faculty of Nursing
  • Quality of life
  • Older adults in long-term care settings
Carol Harvey
  • Senior Scholar
  • Faculty of Human Ecology, Department of Family Social Sciences
  • Problem solving within families, including grandparents
  • Family resource management of immigrants and multicultural groups
Grant Hatch
  • Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics
  • Canada Research Chair in Molecular Cardiolipin Metabolism

Focuses on three main areas in whole animal, organ, cellular and molecular biology

  • Biology of Cardiolipin
  • Biology of Human Lipid Disorders
  • Biology of Lipoprotein Metabolism 
     
Tuula Heinonen Faculty of Social Work
  • Older rural women and well-being; gender in rural China
  • health dimensions and determinants
  • photography in qualitative research, refugee and immigrant services and needs
  • international community development and health
  • gender and newcomer settlement in Manitoba
Debbie Kelly
  • Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology
  • Canada Research Chair in Comparative Cognition
  • Spatial cognition
  • Understanding how spatial abilities change across the lifespan of humans and animals
  • How spatial cue use changes with age in healthy older adults
Richard Kruk Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology Sensory and cognitive development related to reading and language skills
Jason Leboe-McGowan Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology
  • Investigating the rules that govern errors people make in both perceptual and remembering tasks
  • Investigating how people's ability to perform a task in the present is influenced by prior learning
Christina Lengyel Faculty of Human Ecology, Department of Human Nutritional Sciences

Nutrition and health-related issues of older adults residing in personal care homes and in community residences

Michelle Lobchuk Faculty of Nursing
  • Caregiver wellness
  • Caregiver health-risk behaviors
  • Psychosocial nursing
  • Family caregiving
  • Perception, empathy and perspective-taking
  • Symptom experiences
  • Illness attributions
  • Dyadic communication
  • Cancer screening
  • General practitioner-informal caregiver partnerships
Corey Mackenzie Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology
  • older adults' mental health
  • caregiver stress
  • geriatric psychiatric epidemiology
  • anxiety disorders
  • mental health service utilization
Jonathan Marotta Faculty of Arts, Department of Psychology

Research goals are directed at offering a better understanding of the functional architecture of visual perception and the visual control of action

Verena Menec
  • Faculty of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences
  • Canada Research Chair in Healthy Aging (Tier II )
  • Director, Centre on Aging
  • Healthy aging
  • Determinants of healthy aging
  • Age-friendly communities
  • Health care utilization among older adults, particularly at the end of life
Richard Milgrom Faculty of Architecture, Department of City Planning
  • Social impacts of sprawl in a slow growth city
  • Planning and design for age-friendly communities
  • Planning and design with urban aboriginal communities
  • Sustainability and urban design
  • Participatory planning and design processes
Colleen Millikin Faculty of Medicine, Department of Clinical Health Psychology
  • Differential diagnosis of dementia
  • Delusions in dementia, language and cultural issues in assessment
  • Neuropsychological and behavioural interventions
Jeannette Montufar Faculty of Engineering, Transportation Engineering Road engineering issues affecting the safety of older adults
Elaine Mordoch Faculty of Nursing
  • Child and family health promotion in families living with a mental illness
  • Children's perception of stigma
  • Parenting experiences when living with a mental illness Manifestations of childhood sexual trauma in adults with psychiatric diagnoses
  • Communications in the family living with Alzheimer's disease
  • Rural and remote mental health care
Verna Pangman Faculty of Nursing Family caregiving
Jason Peeler Faculty of Medicine, Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Science

Clinical orthopaedics with an emphasis on validity and reliability testing of clinical orthopaedic assessment rehabilitation techniques designed to enhance patient care and musculoskeletal function

Michelle Porter Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management
  • Neuromuscular adaptations with aging
  • Strength training
  • Functional changes with aging and training
  • Driving and aging
Elizabeth Ready Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation Management
  • Physical health benefits of physical activity in the elderly as related to exercise dose-response issues
  • Recent studies have examined the effects of walking programs on risk factors for coronary heart disease in older women, and the benefits of physical activity during and after menopause. Other studies include the impact of leisure and lifestyle activities on health and function in the elderly
  • The relationship of guidelines for physical activity (e.g. Canada's Physical Activity Guide for Healthy Active Living) to health benefits
  • Community-based physical activity interventions, most recently as co-investigator on the Manitoba and Winnipeg in motion baseline physical activity study
Lesley Ritchie Faculty of Medicine, Department of Clinical Health Psychology
  • Aging and neuropsychology
  • Mild Cognitive Impairment: diagnostic criteria and progression to dementia
  • Stroke and cognitive rehabilitation
Kerstin Roger Faculty of Human Ecology, Department of Family Social Sciences
  • Family and care provision
  • Aging, dementia, end-of-life
  • Health care and applied ethics
  • Qualitative research
Jo-Ann Sawatzky Faculty of Nursing
  • Cardiovascular Health and Disease
  • Women’s Health
  • Physical Activity and Cardiovascular Health
  • Critical Care Nursing issues
Frank Schweizer Faculty of Science, Department of Chemistry
  • Chemical Biology of Aging
  • Development of therapeutic interventions related to bacterial infections and cancer
  • Post-translational modifications in collagen
Alexander Segall
  • Senior Scholar, Professor Emeritus
  • Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology
  • Social Determinants of Health Status
  • Self-Health Management and Health Protective Behaviour
  • Population Health Assessment
  • Healthy Aging
Mary J.  Shariff Faculty of Law
  • Bioethics, Biotechnology, Genetics and the Law
  • Life Extension, Anti-aging and mortality and the Law
  • Legal Strategies
  • Natural Resources, the Environment and the Law
  • Legal Pedagogy
Shahin Shooshtari Faculty of Human Ecology, Department of Family Social Sciences
  • Population/Public health
  • Health and aging
  • Mental health
  • Community health assessment
  • Health education and promotion
  • Health and disability measurement
Daniel Sitar
  • Professor Emeritus 
  • Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine (Clinical Pharmacology), Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Clinical and renal pharmacology
Geoffrey Smith Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources, Department of Environment and Geography
  • Travel activities of the elderly
  • Geographical distributions of the elderly
  • Geographical aspects of institutional care provision for older adults in the United Kingdom
  • Spatial aspects of the intergenerational relations of senior citizen apartment residents
  • Elderly housing
Malcolm Smith I.H. Asper School of Business, Department of Marketing
  • Marketing to older adults
  • Age-related differences in memory for advertising
Philip St. John Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine
  • Rural health
  • Epidemiology of cognitive impairment and depression
Robert Tate Faculty of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences
  • Cardiovascular epidemiology
  • Environmental, occupational, and international (Cuba) health
  • Health services research
  • Epidemiology of aging
Laura Taylor Faculty of Social Work
  • Health, social well-being, and resiliency
  • Focus group research
  • Oral history collection
  • Narrative research
  • Community-based research and development
Sharon Taylor-Henley Faculty of Social Work
  • Aging, gerontological social work
  • Aboriginal people: Development of social institutions within the context of self-government framework, most particularly, facilities for Elders and social welfare institutions to serve Elders
Genevieve Thompson
Faculty of Nursing
  • Palliative care
  • Family caregivers
  • Quality of care
  • Delivery of end-of-life care in long-term care
Leah Weinberg
  • Senior Scholar
  • Faculty of Medicine, School of Medical Rehabilitation
  • Older Adult Health (Geriatrics and Gerontology) in health promotion, injury/disease prevention, and rehabilitation of older adults
  • Aging, health, functional ability, and social cognition (perceived personal control, motivation, attributional retraining) in older adults
  • Prevention of falls in elderly persons
  • Osteoporosis in older adults
  • Interprofessional education (IPE) for health professionals and health professional students

EXTERNAL RESEARCH AFFILIATES

NAME

UNIVERSITY
FACULTY/DEPARTMENT 

 AREAS OF INTEREST

Pamela Hawranik
  • Athabasca University
  • Office of the Vice President, Academic, Dean of Graduate Studies
  • Use of community services by older adults and their informal caregivers
  • Barriers and issues related to the use of community services in rural areas by older adults and their informal caregivers
  • Interventions to assist in improving the quality of life in people with advanced dementia
Frances Racher
  • Brandon University
  • School of Health Studies
  • Population health
  • Community development
  • Health promotion
  • Access to health services
  • Nursing leadership
  • Philosophy of nursing science
Doreen Smith
  • Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg
  • Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology
  • Intergenerational relations as expressed in caregiving and care receiving attitudes and behaviours
  • Financial abuse of mentally incompetent older adults
  • Travel and tourism accessibility issues and older adults
Gina Sylvestre
  • Assistant Professor University of Winnipeg
  • Faculty of Arts, Department of Geography
  • Housing, well-being and residential migration
  • Environmental impacts on mobility of vulnerable populations
  • Social exclusion and aging
  • Community development and intergenerational linkages
Gong (Michael) Zhang
  • Adjunct Professor, University of Manitoba
  • Decision Support Analyst, Clinical Services, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority
    • Health informatics
    • Bioinformatics
    • Biomedical engineering
    • Tissue engineering