Steven Lam

Steven Lam wins CIHR Doctoral Scholarship!

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Congratulations Steven!

2019 CIHR Doctoral Award

Congratulations to Steven Lam for winning a CIHR Doctoral Scholarship!

These awards support “high-calibre students engaged in doctoral programs in all academic disciplines. This support allows scholars to fully concentrate on their doctoral studies, to seek out the best research mentors in their chosen fields and contribute to the Canadian research ecosystem during and beyond the tenure of their awards.”  




Award Winning Poster: Steven Lam

The next poster highlighted in our Award Winning Poster Series, is a poster that was presented by Steven Lam at the Canadian Evaluation Society’s 40th annual conference in Halifax, Canada.

Steven’s poster won the "People's choice poster award”.

Congratulations Steven!

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Award Winning Poster

Canadian Evaluation Society 2019

How is community-based monitoring used to support Indigenous food security in a changing climate? Read our new publication to find out!

Congratulations to Steven Lam for his new publication….

Climate change is expected to exacerbate existing food security challenges, especially in Indigenous communities worldwide. Community-based monitoring (CBM) is considered a promising strategy to improve monitoring of, and local adaptation to climatic and environmental change. Yet, it is unclear how this approach can be applied in food security or Indigenous contexts. Therefore, this paper examined how community-based monitoring is used to support Indigenous food security in a changing climate. We found that monitoring was either collaborative (51%) or externally-driven (37%), and focused primarily on tracking wildlife (29%), followed by natural resources (16%), environmental change (15%), and fisheries (13%).

Abstract

Climate change is expected to exacerbate existing food security challenges, especially in Indigenous communities worldwide. Community-based monitoring (CBM) is considered a promising strategy to improve monitoring of, and local adaptation to climatic and environmental change. Yet, it is unclear how this approach can be applied in food security or Indigenous contexts. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) review and synthesize the published literature on CBM of Indigenous food security; and, (2) identify gaps and trends in these monitoring efforts in the context of climate change. Using a systematic search and screening process, we identified 86 published articles. To be included, articles had to be published in a journal, describe a CBM system, describe any aspect of food security, and explicitly mention an Indigenous community. Relevant articles were thematically analyzed to characterize elements of CBM in the context of climate change. Results show that the number of articles published over time was steady and increased more than two-fold within the last five years. The reviewed articles reported on monitoring mainly in North America (37%) and South America (28%). In general, monitoring was either collaborative (51%) or externally-driven (37%), and focused primarily on tracking wildlife (29%), followed by natural resources (16%), environmental change (15%), fisheries (13%), climate change (9%), or some combination of these topics (18%). This review provides an evidence-base on the uses, characteristics, and opportunities of CBM, to guide future food security monitoring efforts in the context of climate change.

Citation

Lam, S., Dodd, W., Skinner, K., Papadopoulos, A., Zivot, C., Ford, J., Garcia, P.J., IHACC Research Team, Harper, S.L. (2019). Community-based monitoring of Indigenous food security in a changing climate: Global trends and future directions. Environmental Research Letters. 14: 073002. Click here to access the article (free open-access)

National Knowledge Translation Award Winner!

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Congratulations!

Steven Lam wins a national knowledge translation award!

Congratulations to Steven Lam for receiving a National Collaborating Centres for Public Health’s Knowledge Translation Award at the Public Health 2019 conference in Ottawa this week!

Steven receives this award for his PhD research project, which synthesizes experiences from scholarly evaluations and draws synergies between evaluation and knowledge translation to inform public health programs.

As outlined on the Public Health 2019 website, “His work in knowledge translation is motivated by a personal interest in making research more readily available, easier to understand, more interesting, and thus more likely to be used. "What is the point of doing applied research if it doesn't get applied," he quips. He believes both knowledge translation and program evaluation are important parts of public health programming, and finds the synergies between the two exciting. For Steven, knowledge translation has evolved into an approach that engages knowledge users in the process.”

"What is the point of doing applied research if it doesn't get applied?"

                                                     - Steven Lam, Award Winner

Steven received this award based on his project’s relevance to knowledge translation in public health; creativity/innovation shown in the project; scholarliness of the project; potential impact of the project; and quality and degree of support of academic supervisor.

Congratulations Steven!