Month: October 2025

Data NB

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Our colleagues and administrative data holders in New Brunswick have rebranded to DataNB (formerly NB Institute for Research, Data and Training). “We have become synonymous with data – whether it’s training data analysts, holding provincial data or providing data access for research – so the name change just made sense,” said founding director Dr. Ted McDonald, a member of Health Data Research Network Canada’s Executive Committee. For the full announcement, please visit here. In 2024, a collaboration between Atlantic PATH and DataNB created a data linkage that made predicting chronic disease faster and simpler. “I am absolutely thrilled to see these linkages happen,” said Dr. Robin Urquhart, Atlantic PATH Scientific Director. “Atlantic PATH is an incredibly rich resource to understand the health of Atlantic Canadians and all of the different factors, like our biology, behaviours, and environments, that impact our health. This new linkage activity makes our resource more powerful, giving us access to different sources of data to answer complex health questions affecting all AtlanticCanadians.” “Not only is this historical, record-level data linkage activity, this work is crucial for Atlantic Canada, which has among the country’s highest rates of chronic disease and cancer,” said Dr. McDonald “Critically, it will enable researchers to focus on studies related to cancer and chronic disease that cannot be undertaken without linking the separate data sources. The data linkage has other important implications too, such as the potential to inform health policy and improve detection, prevention and treatment.” For additional information about data access, Atlantic PATH and DataNB, please reach out to us directly. Last Updated on October 15, 2025

Participant Town Hall

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Join us for the upcoming Atlantic PATH and CanPath Participant Town Hall! On Monday, November 17th, you can learn about how we are “Preventing Cancer, Together: How your Data is Driving Discoveries.” The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath) is the largest population health study in Canada with more than 330,000 participants in seven regional cohorts, including Atlantic PATH, BC Generations Project, Alberta’s Tomorrow Project, Healthy Future Sask, Manitoba Tomorrow Project, Ontario Health Study, and CARTaGENE (Quebec). The data and biological samples provided by our participants are used to study cancer and chronic disease and support exciting scientific discoveries. Join us at the Town Hall to When: Monday, November 17, 2025 1-230pm Atlantic Time Where: Online Zoom Meeting Register here and submit your questions to be answered during our panel discussion. Please note, the webinar will be recorded and shared afterwards on YouTube. Last Updated on October 14, 2025

World Mental Health Day

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Join us in recognizing World Mental Health Day. CanPath is Canada’s largest population health study and includes approximately 34,000 participants who were diagnosed with depression and more than 27,000 participants with anxiety. Data and biosamples provided by our participants are being used in critical mental health research. Alexandra Del Favero is a PhD student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. Along with her supervisor, Dr. Kelvin Fong and using questionnaire data, toenail and saliva samples from Atlantic PATH, Alex is examining the effect of environmental factors on mental health in Nova Scotia. CanPath is one of 23 cohorts with 2.8 million participants included in the COVID Global Mental Health Consortium (CGMHC). Led by Dr. Jordan Smoller (Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital), this work is investigating pandemic-related mental health outcomes using individual-level harmonized longitudinal data. Data collected from CanPath COVID-19 questionnaires completed by participants from all regional cohorts are being used. Atlantic PATH are proud to lead this work on behalf of CanPath. Dr. Ashlyn Swift-Gallant (Department of Psychology, Memorial University) used data from Atlantic PATH to conduct research that found ovarian hormones contribute to the sex disparity in post-traumatic stress disorder. Drs. Gabriela Ilie, Rob Rutledge and Ellen Sweeney (Dalhousie University and Nova Scotia Health) used data from Atlantic PATH to investigate the association between prostate cancer diagnosis and mental health outcomes. Their work found increased rates of anxiety and depression among males with a history of prostate cancer; higher odds of depression among prostate cancer survivors who were treated with surgery; and higher rates of depression among prostate cancer survivors with a low household income compared to other forms of cancer and a high household income. These findings highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary effort to prioritize and deliver comprehensive mental health support to prostate cancer survivors. This work has helped to inform the groundbreaking Prostate Cancer Patient Empowerment Program (PC-PEP) and CancerPEP led by Drs. Ilie and Rutledge that have been implemented around the world. Atlantic PATH is one of the 18 cohort studies in the PSYchosocial factors and CAncer (PSY-CA) Consortium. Led by Dr. Joost Dekker from the Amsterdam University Medical Centre, this study investigated whether psychosocial factors, such as depression can predict the incidence of cancer. Multiple publications that include Atlantic PATH data can be found here. To find out about the most up-to-date mental health research and learn about data access, please visit our website. Last Updated on October 10, 2025

Message from the Minister of Health – Breast Cancer Awareness Month

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From: Public Health Agency of Canada Statement from the Minister of Health, The Honourable Marjorie Michel P.C., M.P. October 8, 2025  | Ottawa, Ontario | Public Health Agency of Canada “Breast cancer remains one of the most common forms of cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death among women in Canada. One in eight women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis in their lifetime.  That’s why the Government of Canada works closely with partners and stakeholders to promote breast cancer awareness, prevention and screening for early detection. Empowering women to make informed decisions about their health can save lives. …Important work is happening to help us better understand breast cancer trends and risks to better respond to the diverse needs of women across Canada. For example, we have partnered with the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health and Statistics Canada to accelerate breast cancer data analysis based on factors such as age, race and ethnicity. As well, experts are enhancing the OncoSim-Breast model that was developed by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and Statistics Canada, by including data on breast density and exploring the inclusion of race-based data to better predict breast cancer outcomes and inform decision making. Breast cancer touches the lives of so many every day. Nobody should have to face this disease alone. If you or a loved one is coping with a cancer diagnosis, there are many ways you can seek support. Visit the Canadian Cancer Society’s community services locator, which helps cancer patients, caregivers and health care providers find the services they need.” Last Updated on October 8, 2025

IPAJC at EPICOH

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The International Partnership on Automatic Job Coding (IPAJC) will be represented at the 30th edition of the EPICOH Conference (Epidemiology in Occupational Health) from October 6-9, 2025 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The IPAJC was established in 2021 with the partnership seeking to enable and promote efficient collection, processing, and accessibility of job information through improvement of automatic coding tools. Involvement and participation in IPAJC includes occupational epidemiologists and computer scientists engaged in examining the relationships between occupational exposures and health, and has since been expanded to include economists, statisticians and sociologists. Our Research Director, Dr. Ellen Sweeney is a member of the leadership team and represents Atlantic PATH and CanPath. The IPAJC will present at EPICOH: Calvin Ge, Peter Elias, Melissa C. Friesen, Olga Kononykhina, Stacey Marovich, Cheryl Peters, Daniel E. Russ, Malte Schierholz, Ellen Sweeney, Anil Adisesh. (2025). The International Partnership on Automatic Job Coding (IPAJC): A Hub for Automatic Job Coding and Industry Coding Tools and Expertise for Occupational Health Research. Poster Presentation. EPICOH. Utrecht, Netherlands. Additional member presentations include: Daniel E. Russ. (2025). Small Language Model Based NAICS 2022 CLassification of Industry from Products and Services: CLIPS. Oral Presentation. EPICOH. Utrecht, Netherlands. Calvin Ge. (2025). TNO-Auto Occupation Coder: A Novel, Large-Language Model Based Multilingual Automatic Coding Tool for Occupations. Oral Presentation. EPICOH. Utrecht, Netherlands. Pabitra Jossee. (2025). Using the SOCcer occupation auto-coding tool to help participants self-code their occupation in online questionnaires. Oral Presentation. EPICOH. Utrecht, Netherlands. IPAJC hosts bi-monthly online meetings to discuss topics and advances related to automatic classification of jobs, industries, skills and related information. See our upcoming meetings and connect on our LinkedIn page, or contact us for more information.