Our Partners

It has been a very real privilege and pleasure to work on the advisory committee for this Interventions to Enhance Social Inclusion of those with Dementia and their Care partners in Rural Communities. The Research team have done their homework and have developed an  excellent plan. COVID-19 has caused some disruption and has hindered face to face contact with those individuals and organizations interested in participating in this project. However, Dr. Bonnie Jeffery and her team have been very innovative and have created new ways to communicate with them. This is an excellent program and an excellent team!

I thought that your trainees were equal to, or better than, the students that I have met in other training programs in London, Melbourne, Toronto, Berkeley, Cambridge and New York. I don’t know if your remarkable success is due to superior selection methods or to superior training, but the result is clear.

One of the most important things about SPHERU as a collaborative research body, is that they provide opportunities, mentorship, leadership and learning for students.

We have worked with SPHERU researchers since 2003, and have been impressed by SPHERU’s commitment to conducting research that is useful to policy makers and practitioners by developing strong collaborative research partnerships and using sound knowledge transfer and exchange methods to sustain these partnerships.

Their knowledge as to early years development trends and issues, along with their expertise in data assessment, and evaluation, striking under girded the work of this project. Their standard of academic excellence, as well as professionalism and respect, has made it both a privilege and an honour to work and collaborate with SPHERU.

We are very pleased to have partnered with Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine and SPHERU as researchers in our Moose Jaw – South Central Saskatchewan Understanding the Early Years project. SPHERU brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this project.

Working with the healthy children’s research team has provided me the opportunity to learn about the importance of community based research, population health based research and their roles in shaping policy.

We have already seen an impact from our involvement in the study. Through informal contacts with study participants, we identified the need for continued support services to woman who have received services and are now back in the community, and were able to create a new position.

My work on the Healing Journey team.. has been a valuable experience. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this area to help understand the effect of isolation on healing from violence.

With our partnership and the research we have conducted together, we know that we have been able to encourage improvements in policy and practice for young children in Saskatchewan, such as new programs and services like literacy and numeracy programs in the Saskatoon school boards, a new Saskatoon library branch, and more speech and language pathology services. People understand the community’s need much better as well as the important role that research plays in all that we do.

Twenty years young and still growing! When I left as Inaugural Director in 2004, I hoped the Unit would survive, since it certainly had the right people to do that. Alas. It didn’t survive. It thrived! It’s always been a huge pleasure for me the few times I’ve been able to visit since, and to see faces that will always be familiar to me, with a passion for justice (and for fun) that kept SPHERU going from strength to strength. I still credit SPHERU for gifting me the most rewarding five years of my academic life. Live long and prosper.

Working [with SPHERU] has allowed me to apply knowledge gained in the classroom to real life situations and it has also given me greater insight into population health based research.

Working [with SPHERU].. has given me a greater appreciation for the work our Canadian policy makers do, as well as provided me with a more solid understanding of intimate partner violence laws across the country.

We appreciate the depth and breadth of KT knowledge Nazeem Muhajarine and his staff have brought to NeuroDevNet to help translate our research on children neurological development into policy and practice.

For your purposes and with mine too, I was honoured to be invited to participate… Sometimes researchers are strictly at the university and I think that a rural perspective on this research project in particular, having a rural person living it, working it, directly involved, if not as a researcher, it just broadens the opportunity for the questions and sometimes the wording. I think that was great.

Working in the Falls project has been a greatly rewarding experience. With the aging Canadian population, I know my work at SPHERU is contributing to a field of research that is invaluable to the future direction of our health system.

I think it’s important people understand how easy it is for some to fall through the cracks in the health care system, even in Canada. This work to examine the social determinants of health helps fill in some of those gaps to understand why this might be so.

Many decisions in rural life are based on large urban studies or what the next town over is doing. SPHERU and the Healthy Aging in Place team not only conducted on-site research and update meetings in Rosetown but included us in every step, from proposal development to community forum. The attention to ensuring the study had a rural and local lens offered quality data that directly applied to Rosetown. The personal touch gave us, the Rosetown Regional Family and Community Support Services, and partners the confidence to take collective action and make positive changes in our community.

I would not have experienced and learned all I have without my time at SPHERU.