CIHR Team in Applied Injury Research

This team addresses areas of high risk populations, in targeting child welfare clients and Aboriginal populations, as well as intentional injuries, in targeting the areas of child maltreatment and self-harm (i.e., deliberate non-lethal self-harm, suicidal ideation and attempts, suicide). It addresses the cross-cutting themes in this call of common risk factors; data collection (secondary analyses and database linkages); gender/sex based analysis, and understanding and reducing high risk behaviours. This team call focuses on three initiatives that provide the necessary elements to forge a networked knowledge on the link between childhood maltreatment and deliberate self-harm: (1)databases linkages and secondary analyses; (2)intervention research - model development and testing; and (3)knowledge translation research. These initiatives will address the four objectives: (1)determinants of childhood maltreatment and deliberate self-harm, considering risk and protective factors (e.g., co-morbid addiction, socioeconomic disadvantage, interpersonal violence; cognitive processes; genetic risk); (2)development of causal models to link childhood maltreatment and DSH to inform intervention; (3)evaluation of intervention programs, including preventions of child maltreatment, suicide, and recurrent suicide; and (4)the development and testing of effective knowledge translation relating to childhood maltreatment and DSH. Child welfare, clinic, and community populations will be included in research, with DSH youth of various ages (ages 12 to 18), maltreating or at-risk for maltreatment caregivers, and DSH among caregivers and adults. Measuring childhood maltreatment experiences in newly launched studies will be a commonality across all research projects, where measurement tools will reflect child welfare status and involvement (self-report, caseworker report, administrative database), as well as self-reported maltreatment on common forms.