The University of New Brunswick launched a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship program in May 2017 to honour one of Canada’s most respected and influential business leaders, the late Dr. Purdy Crawford.
Dr. Mikael Hellstrom was awarded the first Purdy Crawford/TD Bank Postdoctoral Fellowship in Accessibility, which supports researchers at UNB who work to ensure the people of New Brunswick have access to education, health care, and other programs and services which will enable them to reach their full potential within their communities.
Dr. Alison Luke received the inaugural Purdy Crawford/Stephen Jarislowsky Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Policy, which supports researchers focused on the development of evidence-based public policy in health. It will build on health research at UNB particularly in collaboration with the existing Jarislowsky Chair in Interprofessional Patient-Centred Care.
Dr. Hellstrom will be studying the role immigrants play in designing and delivering social services that help newcomers integrate into the New Brunswick community.
He received his PhD from the University of Alberta in 2015 and holds bachelor and master degrees in arts from Stockholm University in Sweden. He co-authored a report on refugee reception and integration in five countries for the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, a major think tank in Sweden.
His research found that immigrant settlement programs are most successful when immigrant communities are able to play a role in designing and implementing social programs. His work is supervised by Dr. Joanna Everitt, dean of arts at UNB’s Saint John campus.
Dr. Everitt says the work being done at UNB is an example of how important research is to society.
“Public policy shapes the most basic services we rely on, from health care to social services. These fellowships are designed to help people make better public policy -- not in an abstract sense, but right here, right now.”
Dr. Luke, a sociologist, is working on a large intersectional project to implement and evaluate NaviCare/SoinsNavi, the New Brunswick Navigation Centre for Children with Complex Health Conditions, under the supervision of Dr. Shelley Doucet in the department of nursing and health sciences on the Saint John campus.
Dr. Luke, a 1992 graduate of UNB’s faculty of arts, completed her PhD at the University of Waterloo in 2010. Since that time she has worked and taught in the areas of sociology of health and interpersonal relations. She has a background in sociology with specializations in the social determinants of health, access to healthcare, social inequality and research methods.
Suzanne Crawford (LLB ’82), Dr. Purdy’s daughter, said her family is honoured by the establishment of the fellowship program and impressed by the inaugural Purdy Crawford Fellows.
“Dad believed the people of Atlantic Canada could play a major role in making this country better for everyone. I think he would be pleased to know that UNB is supporting leading-edge, applied public policy research in his name, for the benefit of the Atlantic region and Canada,” she said.
