Winner of the ICAIR 2024 Best Research Paper of the Year Award, Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos, Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ontario Tech University.
Long-term health care expert Dr Vivian Stamatopoulos has won the Best Paper of the Year award at the 2024 International Conference on Ageing, Innovation and Rehabilitation (ICAIR).
The research paper explores the trauma experienced by essential caregivers whose family members are in long-term care during the pandemic. Dr. Stamatopoulos, an associate professor of criminology and justice in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Ontario Tech University, co-authored the paper with Dr. Charlene Chu and Amanda Yi, both from the University of Toronto.
The paper, “The worst thing that could happen in my life: Trauma experienced by key family caregivers of loved ones in long-term care during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada,” originally published in the International Journal of Health and Well-Being Qualitative Research, won the top prize in ICAIR's Science Spotlight Series, a competition that brings together distinguished research authors to present their findings in person on a range of topics related to supporting older adults and people living with disabilities and illnesses.
Organized by Toronto-based University Health Network (Canada's top medical research hospital) through its KITE (Knowledge, Innovation, Talent, Everywhere) research enterprise, the two-day ICAIR conference brought together more than 800 participants from a range of disciplines, including healthcare, rehabilitation, engineering and age tech.
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“Receiving this award is an incredibly humbling feeling. Given what our participants have been through during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was incredibly important to us to share their experiences in a way that conveys the seriousness of the situation to our readers. Seeing this paper connect with so many people in academia and beyond is everything we could hope for as researchers.”
– Dr. Vivian Stamatopoulos, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ontario Tech University
