Training a new generation of critical public health researchers and practitioners

A brief account of “highly qualified personnel” funded by the RECOVER19 grant.

As the extension year of our grant from the Canadian government’s New Frontiers in Research Fund draws to a close, it is time to review what we achieved (and collect data for the required final report to the funding agency!). An important element of research funding in Canada is the financial support of “highly qualified personnel” such as graduate students. From the “Guidelines on the assessment of contributions to research, training and mentoring” of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (with my emphasis):

NSERC places a strong emphasis on ensuring high-quality training and mentoring for all personnel involved in research to support and inspire individuals to think critically and create and apply knowledge for the benefit of Canada. These highly qualified personnel (HQP) include college and university (undergraduate and graduate) students, postdoctoral researchers, technicians, artisans, tradespeople and research assistants and associates. HQP may be from a post-secondary institution or from other groups involved in the research, such as community groups or private, public or non-profit sector partner organizations.

The original HQP plan for RECOVER19 was to hire several postdoctoral researchers on fulltime positions. However, due to the large volume and variety of excellent applications received, and the broad range of subprojects we wanted to support across the research themes of the proposal, we decided to proceed instead with parttime positions ranging from 8 to 12 hours per week, occasionally going up to 20 hours per week. Thus the total number of HQP involved at any point over the 2+1 year duration of the grant is very high at 27.

These researchers were supervised across six universities participating in RECOVER19 with larger groups at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University. According to the following breakdown, there were 8 undergraduate students, 10 graduate students, and 9 non-student researchers, varyingly labelled as “research assistants”, “research associates”, or “research professionals” by our universities’ HR departments.

Of the current list of 15 RECOVER19-funded peer-reviewed articles, 11 are co-authored by at least one HQP, attesting to the significant degree of HQP involvement in our research and publishing activities. In addition to the 7 individuals included in this group, there is at least one other, whose co-authored articles are currently still under review, and at least two more, whose co-authored work is still in progress.

The remainder of the 27 may have contributed to subprojects below the threshold of being included in publications, or their subprojects may have ended without tangible results as it sometimes happens in scholarly endeavours. Even then, they would have taken away new research skills, substantial knowledge, and a critical view of public health politics and ethics, representing another important outcome of the grant.