Theme leader: Jack Siemiatycki, Ph.D

j.siemiatycki@umontreal.ca

Researchers

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2002 annual report defines risk as “a probability of an adverse outcome, or a factor that raises this probability.”  The CRCHUM’s Health Risks Theme seeks to prevent these risks with a view to improving the health of the population.

The Health Risks Theme is comprised of four main sub-themes:

i) Identification and characterization of environmental and behavioural risk factors for cancer;
ii) Identification among youths of modifiable factors that are at the origin of adult diseases; e.g., nicotine dependence and sedentarity;
iii) Epidemiology of opiate consumption and development of strategies to prevent HIV and HCV infection among at-riskindividuals;
iv) Study of biological phenomena that modulate the transition from social conditions to pathologies.

For each of these sub-themes, we have important data banks, ongoing data gathering activities, and important new projects which are currently funded or for which we are seeking funding. These include case control studies and cohort studies, some of which are based in Quebec and others elsewhere. All of these projects consist of activities that generate results with a real potential for concrete applications.

The Health Risks Theme contributes in several ways to the community. Our research activities seek to understand and to break the potential links between behaviours—or the environment—and disease. Our research results have concrete and often immediate applications. The main vehicle of knowledge transfer is publication in scientific journals. We are very productive in this regard, and all of our research have a significant number of publications each year. Moreover, we contribute significantly to knowledge transfer via our privileged links with community organizations.

Among other things, our research results have led to better regulation of carcinogens and to the identification of more efficient interventions to prevent transmission of to improve treatments for HIV and HCV among drug addicts, as well as to the identification of better methods for preventing nicotine dependence among youths.

We act as expert advisors for several organizations involved in public health or in the field of public health research; for example: the Public health Directorate (Direction de santé publique); the federal Ministry of Health; the National Institutefor Public Health (Institut national de santé publique); the National Cancer Institute of Canada; the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer; the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer; France’s Institut de recherche en santé publique de la France; and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.