A key driver behind the creation of these chairs, the (OAHN) is a newly established alliance of leading partners, including the teaching and research hospitals affiliated with the University of Ottawa. The network is designed to foster collaboration in research, elevate Ottawa’s reputation as a hub for health innovation, and strengthen our world-class health education ecosystem. By bridging the gap between discovery and practice, OAHN helps ensure that breakthroughs in health research translate more rapidly into improved care, enhanced training, and better outcomes for patients.
These OAHN-URC projects aim to advance research on sleep and mental health, optimize cardiovascular rehabilitation, and examine how language influences equity in health care. By harnessing data, they seek to better understand the nuances of health — and turn evidence into concrete action.
Rebecca Robillard
Ottawa Academic Health Network University Research Chair (OAHN-URC) in Sleep and Mental Health
Faculty of Social Sciences and The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research
Associate Professor Rebecca Robillard seeks to better understand the connection between how we sleep and how we feel, a connection that runs deeper than many realize.
Professor Robillard, who is both a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist, is well-equipped to examine sleep disturbances across a wide range of mental health conditions. By comparing data from individuals with different psychological profiles, she is identifying both common disruptions — such as altered sleep cycles or changes in brain-heart activity — and distinct patterns unique to each condition. This dual lens opens the door to more personalized, targeted interventions.
Her work combines brainwave analysis, wearable sleep tech and real-world data collected in both clinical and community settings. A key part of the project is the creation of a national, open-access repository on sleep and mental health — the first of its kind in Canada.
This resource will be embedded within the Brain-Heart Interconnectome, a major interdisciplinary initiative that explores how the brain and heart interact to shape health outcomes. By contributing to this platform, her work will help accelerate discoveries at the intersection of sleep, mental health and cardiovascular function, especially for underserved and diverse populations.
Jennifer Reed
Ottawa Academic Health Network University Research Chair (OAHN-URC) in Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation
Faculty of Medicine and University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but women are still underrepresented in both research and care. Associate Professor Jennifer Reed is working to change that.
As an affiliated scientist at the , Professor Reed is leading research on how different types of exercise, such as high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or steady-paced workouts, can help women with heart disease improve their physical fitness, mental health and key health markers, including blood pressure and cholesterol.
She’s also exploring how to deliver these exercise programs virtually to make it easier for women who face barriers, such as transportation, childcare responsibilities, or lack of equipment, to follow such programs from home.
In addition, Reed is leading the first national study on physical activity levels in Canadians living with atrial fibrillation (AF), a common heart rhythm condition. Her team will track how active these people are, and what challenges they face, in order to design more inclusive and effective rehabilitation programs that are easier to stick with.
Her work is part of a broader effort to make cardiac care more personalized and equitable — not just for women, but also for anyone whose needs have been overlooked, helping to reimagine how we prevent and treat heart disease in a real-world setting.
Sathya Karunananthan
Ottawa Academic Health Network University Research Chair (OAHN-URC) in Language as a Social Determinant of Health
Faculty of Health Sciences and Institut du Savoir Montfort
Unlike age, gender or income, language is a major determinant of health that is often overlooked. But no longer: Associate Professor Sathya Karunananthan is tackling language as a health determinant head on.
Her research explores how language can either open doors or create barriers to quality care, especially for those who don’t speak the language that prevails in their neighbourhood. Her work focuses on three key groups: French-speaking communities outside Quebec, English-speaking communities in Quebec, and allophones (people whose first language is neither English nor French) across Canada.
By combining population-level data with real-life stories, the program aims to uncover how language shapes people’s health care experiences, and their health outcomes, to provide the data needed to redress linguistic inequities in Canada’s health system. More specifically, the program seeks to generate practical evidence that can inform public policy, improve training for health professionals, and make care more equitable for millions of patients across the country.
In partnership with the , the team is also evaluating digital tools designed to close gaps in health care experienced by those who live in minority language settings.
