Health Disparities & Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

This committee oversees and enables activities to move Canada into a position to contribute to the growing efforts to understand and address sleep health disparities, translate research results and evidence into practice with community engagement, and foster training on equity, diversity and inclusion via education and scholarships.

Meet the Team

  • Colleen Carney

    COORDINATOR Toronto Metropolitan University

  • Sarah Blunden

    Central Queensland University

  • Mya Dockrill

    Dalhousie University

  • Karen Kumar

    Toronto Metropolitan University

  • Mitchell Mathieson

    Dalhousie University

  • Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah

    Canadian Centre for Gender & Sexual Diversity

  • Momina Raja

    Dalhousie University

  • Rébecca Robillard

    University of Ottawa

  • Guido Simonelli

    University of Montreal

  • Lianne Tomfohr-Madsen

    University of British Columbia

  • Nyiassa Walsh

    Concordia University

  • Monnica Williams

    University of Ottawa

Initiatives

  • Engage with key stakeholders and communities to co-develop an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) framework for sleep research and healthcare in Canada and host roundtables to exchange research priorities and set common working goals.

  • Provide guidance on the harmonization of metrics documenting sex, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, socio-economic status, classism, health and service use across all research teams.

  • Create training opportunities for sleep-related EDI training.

  • Stimulate sleep research and training focused on EDI through scholarships.

  • Investigate sleep-related health disparities and EDI in Canada.

  • Co-develop tools to educate health care professionals on health disparities that may apply to their area of practice within the sleep field (work in collaboration with the Consortium’s Indigenous Peoples’ Health Committee).

  • Co-develop recommendations for reducing health disparities linked to sleep healthcare to supplement briefing notes for Federal/Provincial/Territorial governments.

  • Document/publish the Committee's process to highlight concrete means of moving the sleep field forward.