conferences

Going to #CPHA2014

Toronto_at_Dusk_-a — The 2014 CPHA conference will be held in Toronto, ON | Picture courtesy Wikimedia
Commons

Next week, I (Atif) will be heading to the Canadian Public Health Association Conference, where I’ll be presenting at two different points.

I’ll be chairing a session titled “Youth Injury Prevention in Canada – Where should we direct our intervention resources.” It promises to be an interesting presentation, where we’ll be discussing injury in Canada, and where to start tackling the problem of injury. This session is scheduled for Wednesday, May 28th from 1:30pm – 3:00pm.

Injury represents one of the most important negative health outcomes experienced by young people in Canada today. Injuries inflict a large burden on children and adolescents and their
families and communities. Injury events are costly in so many ways, whether measured in premature mortality, or the pain, disability, lost productivity and emotional consequence of non-fatal events.

This panel will be made up of child injury researchers and advocates who will make their case for different forms of injury prevention intervention. At the end of this panel, delegates will: understand more about the burden of youth injury in Canada; be aware of at least four different avenues for injury prevention intervention (primordial intervention, context-level interventions, safe sport and peer-influence interventions); have identified the rationale, strengths and limitations of each intervention approach; and have learned more about ways to undertake and gain support for youth injury prevention (from the CPHA conference program).

My second presentation is one of the studies from my PhD, titled “The influence of location of birth and ethnicity on BMI among Canadian youth.” This is a study that’s in press (woo!), and represents my own research focus. This one will be in the Kenora Room, on Thursday May 29th 2014, from 11:00am to 12:30pm.

Background:
Body mass indices (BMI) of youth change when they immigrate to a new country. This occurs by the adoption of new behaviors and skills, a process called acculturation.

Objectives:
We investigated whether differences existed in BMI by location of birth (Canadian vs foreign born) across 7 ethnic groups, both individually and together. We also examined whether time since immigration and health behaviors explained any observed BMI differences.

Methods:
Data sources were the Canadian Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Study and the Canada Census of Population. Participants were youth in grades 6-10 (weighted n = 19,272). Sociodemographic characteristics, height, weight, and health behaviors were assessed by questionnaire. WHO growth references were used to determine BMI percentiles.

Results:
Foreign-born youth had lower BMI than peers born in Canada, a relationship that did not decrease with increased time since immigration. Similarly, East and South East Asian youth had lower BMI than Canadian host culture peers. Finally, Arab/West Asian and East Indian/South Asian youth born abroad had lower BMI than peers of the same ethnicity born in Canada. These differences remained after controlling for eating and physical activity behaviors.

Conclusions:
Location of birth and ethnicity were associated with BMI among Canadian youth both independently and together.

Implications:
Our findings stress the importance of considering both ethnicity and location of birth when designing and implementing interventions. While currently either one or the other is addressed, our study shows there is heterogeneity in BMI by specific ethnic groups depending on whether they were born in Canada or not.

As always I’ll be trying to livetweet the conference. I’ll be using the #CPHA2014 hashtag, so feel free to follow along online! As always, there are a wide range of presentations and workshops, so I’m excited to attend.

If you’re attending the conference, leave a comment with details of your own presentation so that other readers can attend your talks. And if you see me at the conference, be sure to say hi!

This was posted simultaneously on my blog PLOS Blogs Public Health Perspectives

May 20, 2014 0

Planning for the summer

This post may sounds a little premature to some of you. After all, it’s only March, we *just* changed the clocks and there’s still snow on the ground. However, before you know it summer will be on us and things will be happening! Things! Exciting things! But in order to ensure you get said “things” done, you need to take a critical look at your life and prepare.

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

To start, get a calendar. I’m a big fan of Google Calendar because I use multiple devices – my phone, desktop(s), a laptop and an iPad, and this automagically sync’s everything between them. As a result no matter what I’m using, I can check my schedule. However, I know others prefer a planner or agenda made of dead trees. Each their own. I find the latter too easy to lose. I’m assuming most of you have some sort of time management system, but if not, there’s no time like the present to start.

After this, start planning our your summer. Think of conferences you’re going to, events you know you have to attend (weddings, parties, concerts, whatever), and write all of those down. If there was one thing that changed between undergrad and graduate school for me, it’s that everyone got married and started having kids. Suddenly, hanging out with people became scheduled between naptime and bathtime. Granted, that sounds a lot like first year, but lets stay on track here.

Now the tricky part. Start thinking about how long everything will take to prepare. Say you’ve got a conference starting Monday May 26th where you’re presenting a poster? Great. First off, you want to make sure your poster is printed by the Friday beforehand – May 23rd. In order to ensure this happens, you want to give the print shop at least 3 days, to account for any unforseen delays on their end. This brings you back to May 20th. Now, you want to make sure your supervisors have approved the poster. Lets assume it’ll take them a week to do that – May 13th. Great. So you need a (close to) final copy of your poster sent to your supervisors by May 13th. But you have to do some analysis before then, and then create the poster. That can take another 2 weeks or so, which means you have to start this process on April 29th, in order to be able to present on May 26th.

Ah! But if you have a plan Bilbo, you can run off off into the blue!

So that example is an “ideal” case, where you have lots of time to prepare, and things go off without a hitch. Many of you might be reading this and thinking that there’s no way you’d spend that much time on a poster. But very rarely will things occur in isolation – while you’re working on that poster, you’ll also be writing up manuscripts, collecting data and possibly teaching or supervising summer students. In that case, you want to make sure that you know what is due when, and that you don’t miss important milestones to avoid last minute panic.

But what if it’s not a poster? What if it is your thesis defence? If your supervisor is away for the entire month of August, then you either defend in July, or September. You need to plan for that. This becomes exponentially more difficult if you have multiple supervisors (especially if they travel a lot in the summer), and at the PhD level is a nightmare because you are at the mercy of your supervisor, your secondary supervisor, your examining committee and anyone else who has to be there. As a result, you have to start planning this well in advance if you hope to defend by a certain date.

The advantages of planning your summer now are numerous. For one, you can start looking into flights, transportation and accommodation for any conferences you’re going to. In addition, it can give you a concrete idea of what you need to do, and when you need to do it. As a result, you set a series of “microgoals” that you can use to gauge your progress through your project(s), which has the dual benefit of keeping you on track and keeping you motivated through small victories.

In addition, being on top of tasks will mean you can deal with things as they come up both good and bad. If the weather is nice and people want to go to Sandbanks for the day? Sure! Go for it! You know you have time.

Have a great rest of the semester, and happy Spring!

This was also published on Gradifying

March 9, 2014 0

Heading to #SciWri13!

A quick update for all our readers – Cristina and I (Atif) will be in beautiful Gainesville, Florida this week for the National Association of Science Writers/Council for the Advancement of Science Writers annual conference!

I will be speaking on a panel on Saturday November 2nd titled “Take a lesson from the universe: Expand” in the Dogwood room at 11am. I’m excited to be speaking on this panel, along with some of my favourite science communicators in Alan Boyle, Joe Hanson, Matt Shipman and Kirsten “Dr Kiki” Sanford. Thanks also to Clinton Colmenares for organizing this wonderful opportunity and what promises to be an excellent discussion.

A description of the session from the program:

Scientists know science. And they’re good at getting science news. Know who’s not? Non-scientists. Yet non-scientists outnumber scientists, and their attitudes, believes, intellects (or not) and their votes help determine science policies, from funding for stem cells to what’s taught in school. The near-extinction of science reporters at local news outlets has created a gap in a steady stream of legitimate, dependable science news. Yet today there are more ways than ever to reach the general public. This session is about expanding your audience beyond the science in crowd. We’ll talk with two young scientists who are passionate about finding new ways to reach new audiences and we’ll explore ideas for how PIOs, freelancers, staff reporters and even scientists themselves can take a lesson from the universe and expand.

If you see either of us around, be sure to say hi! We’ll be at most of the events, and would love to meet you!

This was published simultaneously on PLOS Sci Ed

October 28, 2013 0

Heading to #CPHA13

Ottawa is a beautiful city in the summer - hopefully we'll be able to enjoy it! | Photo credit: Atif Kukaswadia — Ottawa is a beautiful city in the summer – hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy it! | Photo credit: Atif Kukaswadia

Just a short note today – I (Atif) will be heading to the Canadian Public Health Association Conference next week, which is being held in my home town of Ottawa, Ontario. I’ve never been to the CPHA Conference, so I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll be tweeting findings from the conference using the #CPHA13 hashtag, and I’m hoping others will be too. There are a wide range of presentations this year, and I’m excited to hear about all the research that people are doing, as well as the vision that CPHA has for themselves and for their role in promoting public health in Canada.

I’m going to presenting a poster on one of the studies from my PhD titled “A Cross-sectional Analysis of Immigrant Status and Its Relation to Physical Activity Among Canadian Youth.” I’ll be by my poster for the breaks, so drop by Canada Hall 2 to learn all about it.

If you’re attending the conference, leave a comment with details of your own presentation so that other readers can attend your talks. And if you see me at the conference, be sure to say hi!

This was posted simultaneously on PLOS Blogs Public Health Perspectives

June 7, 2013 0

Science and Storytelling

A short post today, as I know everyone is busy, and the time you spend reading could be better spent listening to me in the YouTube video above 🙂

I was fortunate enough to speak at TEDxQueensu last semester. For those of you familiar with the TED format, it’s a short (< 18 minute) talk about an idea or concept. Some famous ones are by Sir Ken Robinson (Schools Kill Creativity), Candy Chang (Before I die, I want to) and this talk by Simon Sinek (How great leaders inspire action). The latter is the one that inspired me to do this talk.

In a nutshell, I think science is awesome. But I also think that science is suffering a public relations crisis at the moment, with people having a hard time understanding what it is we do, and more important why scientific research matters. That idea is what fuelled my TEDx talk above.

For those wondering, TEDxQueens was a great experience. There were a range of people there, including fellow PhD candidate Heidi Penning, who spoke about her experiences raising a child with autism in her talk entitled “Discovering what lies beyond the bend.” I’d definitely recommend attending next year if this is the kind of thing you enjoy – and definitely audition if you have an idea worth spreading!

Thanks again to the TEDxQueensu team for such a great opportunity and for putting on such an awesome event.

This piece was simulblogged on Gradifying

January 14, 2013 1

New Post on PLOS Public Health: Public Health 2.0: Electric Boogaloo

I love conferences and seminars. Having someone who is passionate about an issue get up and present is one of the best ways to learn about something new, and can really bring something to life. But what’s perhaps most interesting is not how effectively someone can communicate an issue, but it’s in the break immediately afterwards. Do people leave to discuss the topic that was just presented? Do they leave thinking about what you said? In my mind, that’s one mark of a good presenter: they make you think about the issue so deeply that it dominates the conference lunch immediately afterwards.

I had this experience last week. As part of an introductory epidemiology course, the students were allocated to a side and had to “debate” an issue. One of the topics was “Vaccination campaigns can be helped by social media,” with the two teams arguing accordingly. That got me to thinking: How is social media used by public health professionals? And can it be used effectively?

Click here to continue reading!

December 4, 2012 0

Hey Mr Epid! What should I bring to a conference?

It’s conference time! Which means three things: 1) you’re frantically applying to every travel award, scholarship and bursary available to help fund your trip, 2) you’re trying to put together your poster and/or powerpoint at the last minute and 3) if this is your first academic conference, you’re wondering what to bring with you. This post is dedicated to the last point (inspired by Ars and other sites).

I like to pack light at conferences. You spend most of your time shuttling between rooms and the more you have with you, the more you have to worry about. That being said, I like to have the following 7 things with me at every conference: