2018 CIHR-IHSPR Rising Star Award Recipients

Recognizing emerging health services and policy researchers

The CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR-IHSPR) is pleased to announce that Lindsay Hedden, Gilla Shapiro and Deepa Singal have received the 2018 CIHR-IHSPR Rising Star Awards.

The Rising Star Award review committee selected this year's winners for their excellence in research and/or knowledge translation, the innovation of their work and the potential impact of their work within the field of health services and policy research.

In addition to receiving an award of $1,000 and a certificate of excellence, the recipients were honoured at the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) conference, held in Montreal on May 29-31, 2018.

Lindsay Hedden

A postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation and the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Lindsay Hedden’s research focuses on health services delivery and workforce planning in primary care and cancer control. Her background is multidisciplinary; she is an administrative data specialist, with expertise in survey data, patient reported outcomes, and co-effectiveness modeling. Her doctoral work with Dr. Morris Barer focused on gender-driven differences in career trajectories, activity, patient and service mix, and scopes of practice for BC’s primary care physicians. Concurrently, she also worked on a research program investigating physician retirement patterns and their effect on supply and access. Previously employed as a Health Economist at the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control, she focused on producing cost-effectiveness evidence within a program, budgeting and marginal analysis framework. She has published several articles on cost-effectiveness modeling in the context of cancer control. Currently serving as Treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Justice Emmett Hall Memorial Foundation, she is a long-time advocate for the role of students in the health services and policy research community.

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Gilla Shapiro

Gilla Shapiro is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at McGill University and a Vanier CIHR Canada Graduate Scholar.  Gilla began her studies at the University of Cambridge, where she earned her BA and MA (Cantab) in Social Psychology.  Further developing her interest in health policy, Gilla completed the MPA/MPP dual degree program at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Hertie School of Governance.  Gilla’s doctoral research investigates decision-making and policy issues related to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.  She has published in diverse fields including cancer prevention and policy, vaccination, addictions, sleep medicine, abortion rights, mental health crisis interventions, and psycho-oncology.

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Deepa Singal

A Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Health Systems Impact Fellow at Manitoba’s Centre for Health Policy and Healthy Child Manitoba, Dr. Deepa Singal is on a mission to link health and social administrative data to improve Canadian children and mothers’ health and wellbeing. Her dissertation was the first North American population-based study to investigate the health and service use of mothers who gave birth to children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She also led one of the largest studies in the world investigating adverse outcomes of children exposed to antidepressants and psychotropic drugs in utero. In her fellowship, Deepa works closely with a Senior Assistant Deputy Minister to deliver the Government of Manitoba’s objectives of using evidence-based decision making to develop and evaluate provincial strategies affecting the health of mothers and children. Dr. Singal is an author of a dozen peer-review articles, over half a dozen government reports, and has garnered over half a million dollars in competitive funding.  Dr. Singal is the recipient of the Research Manitoba Dissertation Award, the Children’s Hospital Research Institution of Manitoba Foundation Award, and the Dr. Sterling Clarren FASD Early Investigator Award. Deepa hopes to forge a hybrid career path between academia and policy.

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Date modified:

2017-06-07