Our research is not limited to the university laboratory. We also work to build awareness, support and engagement among different communities.
We partner with participants through community advisory groups, who help us understand their conditions and concerns, spread the word about our research and encourage participation in our studies. These advisory groups also offer invaluable advice and support to help us ensure that we’re asking questions that matter and our interactions with study participants are ethical and respectful at all times.
We believe that cultural traditions and medical treatments need to be studied from the participants’ perspectives. In addition to data that we can collect and measure independently, we value individuals’ first-person experiences as an essential part of our rigorous research approach.
Our commitment to our study participants is to share our results and other information about what else is known so the populations we are studying can benefit from our work.
We have established community advisory groups for our studies and we are currently collaborating on a community-based study being run by Uzima Women International to explore Female Genital Cutting (FGC) among African women in Toronto.