Media

OTTAWA, May 10, 2010  —  The Faculty of Health Sciences officially launched today the Loyer DaSilva Research Chair in Public Health Nursing and in so doing, honoured one of the Faculty’s most dedicated former leaders: Marie des Anges Loyer DaSilva.

Professor Loyer has been part of the Faculty for over 50 years as a student, an alumna, a faculty member, a dean, a director of the School of Nursing, a member of the University’s Board of Governors, and a generous donor. The chair was funded with donations of more than one million dollars by Professor Loyer and the Faculty of Health Sciences.

“It’s hard to imagine someone who has contributed more, and in so many ways, to our Faculty and the University of Ottawa,” said Dean Denis Prud’homme. “Professor Loyer is held in high esteem by our Faculty and we are delighted to be inaugurating this chair today.”

The Marie des Anges Loyer DaSilva Research Chair in Public Health Nursing will support an ambitious research agenda at the University’s Faculty of Health Sciences until 2014. Focusing on health promotion, the Chair will also support the case management and improvement of mental health for both individuals and the greater community.

The Chair aims to provide an infrastructure that promotes the development and support of a research program designed to expand the body of nursing care knowledge in the field of community care and to disseminate it by implementing responsible practices within groups and communities that are underprivileged or marginalized.

The holder of the Chair is Dawn Smith, PhD, assistant professor at the School of Nursing, in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Health Sciences. Prof. Smith holds an Ontario Ministry of Health Mid-Career Nursing Research Award and is co-investigator with the pan-Canadian Population Health Intervention Research Network (PHIRNET) and the uOttawa-McGill Anishnabe Kekendazone Network Environments for Aboriginal Health Research. In addition, she is a research associate with the Ontario Population Health Improvement Research Network, and co-investigator with the Ontario Training Centre in Health Services and Policy Research.

Prof. Smith has received peer reviewed funding, as principal investigator and co-principal investigator, to conduct research on improving knowledge and capacity for safe and responsive preventive health care for members of marginalized populations. Her research and activities are based on critical socio-ecological theory, and use strengths-based stakeholder engagement and intervention science to better understand and take action to promote socially just systems, policies, programs and relationships. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses focused on intervention design and evaluation community health in nursing and interdisciplinary education programs.