Dear Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives Community,
Each term, HBHL provides updates on our progress, priorities and upcoming plans for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to ensure transparency and accountability regarding the commitments we’ve made in this crucially important area. Due to unexpected staffing issues, we were unable to send an update last term; therefore, the current update covers progress made across both 2023 terms.
2023 Update
HBHL-IMPRESS
Over the past two summers, HBHL has collaborated with Branches—McGill’s Community Outreach Program at Enrollment Services—on the program. IMPRESS provides post-secondary Indigenous students at the early stages of their academic careers with an opportunity for a hands-on research experience alongside meaningful mentorship, training and networking opportunities. HBHL is proud to support the neuroscience stream of this paid internship program, which places the student participants in the labs of McGill professors.
In 2023, the IMPRESS program continued to flourish and expand: HBHL supported 12 brain health research students, 10 of whom were from outside Quebec, hosted by eight HBHL-funded PIs. HBHL also funded the mentorship component of the brain health research stream, which ensured participants had role models who share similar academic and cultural backgrounds. Overall, HBHL’s support of the 2023 edition of IMPRESS represented a financial commitment by HBHL of $120,000.
As part of the IMPRESS program, all individuals engaging with Indigenous students were asked to participate in a cultural competency workshop led by Prof. Geraldine King and assisted by Alex Allard-Gray and Kayla Moore. The workshop provided attendees with training on how to create a safe space for their future interns. Both administrative and academic members of the HBHL community attended this informative session.
Dane Malenfant, a participant from the first year of IMPRESS, succinctly captured the transformative nature of the program: "The IMPRESS program not only introduced me to research but set me up on a path directly towards graduate school." He also noted the program's unique mentorship aspect, mentioning his mentor, a Métis McCall MacBain Scholar: “Being able to reach out to an accomplished graduate student really helped my confidence […]. We both have very similar backgrounds and studied computer science as undergraduates."
The IMPRESS program team, including HBHL, was honoured with a Principal’s Award at McGill’s Fall 2023 Convocation.
Training
HBHL has hosted five EDI-related training events since last year, including two workshops on building an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion plan for research funding applications. HBHL also featured the IMPRESS program at the HBHL Symposium 2023 and collaborated with McGill’s Integrated Program in Neuroscience (IPN) to host an EDI session at the 2023 IPN Fall Retreat.
The 2023 HBHL Graduate Fellowship Competition continues to improve in the representation of equity-seeking groups who are awarded fellowships. This is in part due to the collection of self-identification data and the application of HBHL’s Excellence Levels approach to funding, having supervisors complete an EDI statement.
Recruitment and Retention
In the arena of faculty recruitment, our EDI efforts remain robust. HBHL’s New Recruit Start-up Supplements program has effectively attracted faculty members from equity-seeking groups—65% of the 24 new HBHL faculty hires supported through the New Recruit Start-Up Supplements program are members of at least one McGill Equity-Seeking Group. HBHL remains committed to supporting their integration into the university.
Governance
There have been no significant changes to HBHL’s governance structure since the last reporting period.
EDI has continued to be considered while filling vacant roles in the membership of our governance committees. Specifically, all vacant roles that are not ex-officio in nature are subject to open calls and, when multiple candidates express interest, EDI is considered in the selection process. This process has resulted in the representation of equity-seeking groups in HBHL’s governance structure being aligned with the representation of members of equity-seeking groups in the McGill population. That said, among members of HBHL’s governance committees, equity-seeking groups remain underrepresented with respect to the McGill neuroscience community.
Research Content
While all HBHL-funded projects must pass an SGBA+ review, a large proportion of funded projects still require amendments to the SGBA+ section following review. To address this gap as well as feedback from PIs indicating they want to receive specific advice for EDI best practices in research proposals, HBHL launched a pilot program offering individual sessions with inclusion consultant, Falisha Karpati. Participating researchers received personalized written feedback on grant applications, with a focus on EDI, and met one-on-one with Falisha to discuss the feedback and EDI practices that could be implemented in their projects/teams. The testimonials from the two-month pilot were overwhelmingly positive, with all participants indicating they were very satisfied with the consultation and very likely to apply the advice they received to their research. HBHL will be offering the program again in the near year.
Distribution of Funding
As part of HBHL’s Canadian Framework for Brain Health Research initiative, HBHL will be launching an RFA to support multidisciplinary teams in developing guidance on integrating the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) into neuroscience research. The objective of this RFA is to improve the applicability of brain health research findings by developing guidance on the appropriate inclusion of social factors.
Subsidy Programs and Accessibility
Following the results of the 2022 Climate Survey, which indicated a need to improve accessibility and inclusion at our events, HBHL launched an initiative to provide subsidies to support event attendance. For individuals who have mobility restrictions and require the use of adaptive transport, HBHL can provide a subsidy to cover the cost of transport. In addition, for caregivers with childcare responsibilities, HBHL can provide a subsidy to cover childcare costs while they attend an HBHL event.
Priorities over the next six months
Over the next six months, priority action items include:
- Close work with McGill’s Branches office to recruit HBHL-funded PIs to receive Indigenous undergraduates in their labs for the 2024 edition of the IMPRESS program.
- HBHL will also work with Branches to explore funding possibilities beyond the term of HBHL to ensure the sustainability of this program.
- HBHL is collaborating with our Trainee Committee to offer Summer Training Fellowships to McGill undergraduate students—particularly those who are first generation university students.
- Increase the number of EDI workshops and training opportunities available to the McGill brain health research community by providing support to meetings and conferences that include an EDI-related session in their program. This initiative will take the shape of an open call.
- Organization of additional workshops on integrating EDI into research design and practices, as well as continuing to provide one-on-one consultation hours for EDI best practices in grant applications.
- Completion and publication of a paper on HBHL’s Excellence Levels approach to funding in an open access journal to share this novel funding approach. HBHL will also submit this process to the database of equitable funding tools developed and published by Wellcome Trust.
We welcome your feedback, questions and suggestions on how we can do more or do better. If you would like to collaborate or get involved with HBHL’s EDI initiatives, please contact HBHL’s Project Manager, Kim Reeve (kim.reeve [at] mcgill.ca).
Sincerely,
The HBHL Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee
