Ongoing Projects at HERG
NB Student Wellness Survey Elementary Surveillence and Student Wellness Survey (Gr. 6 to 12)
Atlantic Early Childhood Centre Initiative
Youth Smoking Survey (YSS)
Improving Student Wellness in New Brunswick
Funded by the Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport, and in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Health and Education Research Group of the University of New Brunswick and Université de Moncton has undertaken an effort to encourage and support school and community participation in the development of wellness activities. For the 2006-2007 school year the initiative focused on middle and high schools across both Anglophone and Francophone Districts.
The Student Wellness Survey incorporated the four areas of wellness outlined in the Provincial Wellness Strategy.
These areas are: physical activity, healthy eating, mental fitness, and tobacco free living. Each school has received an individual profile reflecting the results of the surveys completed in the last school year.
The second phase of the wellness initiative, knowledge translation, began in January of 2008 and will continue until the end of the initiative. These schools will receive individual feedback reports in the 2008 -2009 school year. The profiles will provide schools with suggestions and strategies to help improve wellness for their own students.
Visit the NB Student Wellness page here.
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Pathways to Resilience
The Pathways to Resilience Research Project is a three-year research study funded by the government of Canada's National Crime Prevention Centre and administered through Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Pathways to Resilience integrates both quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine service use patterns among Atlantic Canadian youth.
The goal is to identify pathways most predictive of healthy outcomes for youth who use multiple services. The study is taking place in the Halifax Regional Municipality, across New Brunswick and in Labrador. The project is lead by Dr Michael Ungar and managed by Dr Linda Liebenberg.
The Health and Education Research Group serves as the New Brunswick site responsible for exploring the pathways that may lead youth to involvement with correctional services, and those that protect them from such outcomes.
HERG researchers investigate differences in how resilient and non-resilient youth “negotiate” for the social determinants of health (e.g. secure attachments to caregivers, a sense of belonging to their community, personal control, adequate housing and educational opportunities) with their families, community organizations and service delivery systems that provide them support, treatment and care.
To learn more about the International Resilience Project, visit http://www.resilienceproject.org/.
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NB Power Workplace Wellness Initiative
The NB Power and the Health and Education Research Group have a newly established partnership that will focus on mental fitness in the Workplace.
The objectives of the Workplace Mental Fitness Initiative (WMFI) are:
- To increase employees’ understanding of mental fitness and its relationship to creating readiness to implement personal health lifestyle changes; and
- To actively engage employees in workplace mobilization efforts that contribute to relatedness among personnel and managers, a sense of personal and team competency, and empowerment in pursuing positive lifestyle changes.
This workplace initiative is based on an evidence-based framework designed to increase the self-determination of employees in pursuing personal growth and mental well-being. Self-determination theory is a humanistic orientation that postulates that key need areas must be addressed in order to create an environment in which people are motivated to take ownership and to initiate specific actions related to positive growth and development.
Addressing such need areas requires fostering a sense of belonging in the workplace community (relatedness), building on existing strengths and capacity (competency), and involving individuals directly in determining the actions that will ultimately contribute to their own health and well-being (autonomy).
The activities and messages implicit in this mobilization effort are directed towards addressing these key need areas with the intent of engaging the workplace community’s internal capacity to bring about and sustain a healthy and positive quality of life for its employees.
The Workplace Mental Fitness Initiative will span approximately 30 months and will include the following activities:
- Mental fitness orientation sessions
- Employee consultations
- Planning forums
- Creation of mental fitness working groups
- Implementation of working group actions
- Ongoing evaluation
Some of the potential benefits associated with implementation of this initiative involve a range of positive workplace and individual employee outcomes, including:
- Increased positive affect
- A sense of optimism among employees and enhanced trust among supervisors, managers, and employee team members
- Joint ownership in addressing workplace challenges
- Competency and empowerment in pursuing healthy lifestyle changes.
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Atlantic Early Childhood Centre Initiative
Be Ready for Success: A 10 year Early Childhood Strategy for New Brunswick is a 10-year plan committed to strengthening the capacity of parents and communities to support families and young children. In consultation with parents and community stakeholders, the Province of New Brunswick has committed to design and implement four demonstration sites:
Bath Early Years Coalition
Saint John Early Childhood Development Centre,
Moncton Centre de Eeveloppement de la petite Enfance et de la Famille,
Robertville Centre de Developpement de la Petite Enfance et de la Famille
This three-year pilot project will test early childhood centres as a way to better integrate early childhood services and offer a seamless experience for parents and young children. The primary goal of this three-year evaluation is to report on the key issues being tested by the Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC) pilot project.
HERG, in consultation with a joint Evaluation Advisory Committee composed of representatives from the evaluation and research organization, the McCain Family Foundation, the Departments of Social Development, Education, Health, and Wellness, Culture and Sport, will conduct the evaluation and report the findings.
Youth Smoking Survey
The Youth Smoking Survey (YSS) is a biennial national survey which provides national and provincial data on youth and adolescent smoking rates and smoking behaviours. YSS is conducted in over 300 schools across Canada with approximately 30 schools participating in New Brunswick.
The first Youth Smoking Survey occurred in 1994 and was the largest and most comprehensive survey on youth smoking behaviours since 1979. The YSS was repeated in 2002, 2004-2005 and 2006-2007.
The Health and Education Research Group is currently conducting province-wide tobacco control surveillance among youth in conjunction with all other provincial jurisdictions. The outcomes of this research effort will provide policy-makers and practitioners with updated research on youth attitudes and behaviours related to tobacco use.
Completed Projects at HERG
Learn about the Completed Projects at HERG