The CNODES Dalhousie Site Team: Front Row (L-R): Linda Dodds, Sandra Pauls, Yan Wang, Ying Zhang, Hala Tamin. Second Row (L-R): Upal Nath, Ingrid Sketris, Adian Levy. Back Row (L-R) Barbara Hill-Taylor, Chris Theriault. (Photo: Danny Abriel)
On February 7th, Dr. Tom Marrie (Dean, Faculty of Medicine), Dr. Gerry Johnston (Associate Dean, Faculty of Medicine), Dr. Adrian Levy (Community Health and Epidemiology) and Dr. Ingrid Sketris (Pharmacy), officially launched the Dalhousie site of the Canadian Network for Obsservational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES). Academics, decision makers and researchers learned about and celebrated the opportunities presented by this $1.795M, five year project.
Dr. S. Suissa of the Montreal Jewish Hospital (Nominated Principal Investigator) oversees the CNODES network, whose main objective is to explore and expand Canada’s ability to engage in post-market surveillance of drugs. Pharmacists Ingrid Sketris and Neil MacKinnon (now at the University of Arizona) are collaborating with other Dalhousie Unviersity researchers (Adrian Levy – Nova Scotia’s co-principal investigator, Kenneth Rockwood, Linda Dodds, George Kephart and John Fisk), Acadia University’s Ying Zhang and other national investigators on this CIHR funded project. Researchers from Dalhousie’s Population Health Research Unit are conducting the analyses on the Nova Scotia database. Their data is combined with results from the other Canadian and international databases (Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, UK and US). This project is an important component of the federal government’s drug safety and effectiveness strategy.