Gateway needs funding, volunteers and research study participants, Bridges residents told
Posted By Susan Hundertmark
Seaforth Expositor April 21, 2010
In the first of a number of planned meetings aimed at various groups, Gateway Rural Health Research Institute had three messages for the residents of the Bridges of Seaforth last week – volunteers are needed to participate in health studies, volunteers are needed to lick stamps and stuff envelopes for an upcoming marketing campaign and donors are needed to provide funds for the research institute.
"The reason we came here is Bridges has a history of coming into the community and helping out," said Gateway president Lin Steffler.
As well, Gateway announced that the Seaforth Community Development Trust had donated $20,000 towards a marketing campaign for the research institute.
Steffler said the research institute is quickly running out of room at its three offices at the Huron East Health Centre and will need funds to build a new building on land that was donated to Gateway last year.
"We've put in three applications to the federal government but so far, we've not been successful. But, we're going to keep trying," she said, adding that Gateway would appreciate any contacts to interested funders that the community could provide.
Both Gwen Devereaux, Gateway vice president and Dr. Claudio Munoz, research director, gave talks about the beginnings of the research institute, stressing the fact that Gateway is the first community-driven rural health research institute in Canada.
Munoz reiterated that Huron, Perth, Grey and Bruce Counties have some of the highest rates of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure in the province and therefore present a great opportunity for medical research. He pointed out that a CIHR Primary Healthcare Summit held in January set a goal to make Canada an international leader in primary healthcare research by 2020.
"It shows we are on the right track here in Seaforth," he said of the resolution.
Devereaux said a "memorandum of understanding" was recently signed between Gateway and the University of Waterloo's pharmacy school, creating the opportunity for collaboration in research between the two centres and the placement of a University of Waterloo professor in Seaforth to provide medical education.
"It will bring academic researchers to the community, exposing students to a rural setting in hopes that someday they will chose a rural community as a place of practice," added Munoz.
As well, he said, the University of Waterloo professor would be developing a rural component to the training for pharmacy students.
Currently, Gateway, in partnership with the Lawson Health Research Institute of London, Ont., is in the middle of the ARTEMIS research project, a year-long study similar to the earlier DATA study, where participants are provided with Blackberry cellphones and a Bluetooth adapter which will transmit data through the Blackberry from blood pressure, heart and glucose monitors, and asked to go for a daily walk of 10,000 steps (or eight kilometres).
Munoz said Gateway has committed to finding 150 rural residents to participate in the study, which began last November. So far, 80 people are participating in the study but Munoz said Gateway will continue until it finds 70 more people to join in.
"We're hoping to meet the target by June or July this year to get them enrolled so we'll finish next summer. The first participants will finish this November. The patients are really enjoying it and they're committed, which is essential for the study's success," he said.
Maureen Agar, of Egmondville, volunteered to tell the audience how much she enjoyed being part of the DATA study.
"I was on pills for high blood pressure but by the end of the study, I was off of them. It proved to me that 10,000 steps a day is so simple," she said, encouraging others to join the ARTEMIS study.
She said her husband Merv is participating in the year-long ARTEMIS study and "he's healthier than he's been in 10 years."
Article ID# 2544005
