National Pain Rounds

Dr. Pillai Riddell is the Tier 1 York Research Chair in Pain and Mental Health and Director of the Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt Laboratory (OUCH Lab ; www.yorku.ca/ouchlab) in the Department of Psychology of York University in Toronto, On-tario, Canada. She is also a registered clinical psychologist, focused on her practice in per-inatal/parent mental health, infant mental health, and chronic pain. As both a basic be-havioural scientist and a clinician-scientist, Dr. Pillai Riddell leads a multi-national re-search program that studies parents and babies during painful procedures. Her research is funded by all three national Canadian research councils (Canadian Institutes of Health Re-search, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Social Sciences and Humani-ties Research Council). She is also involved extensively in supporting EDI initiatives in re-search ecosystems. She is the Nominated Principal Investigator for DIVERT Mental Health- a multi-million dollar CIHR-funded national training program in setting out to disrupt the Canadian mental health system by innovating curriculum for mental health trainees that focuses on more diverse knowledges and leverages technology to make services accessi-ble to more Canadians (divertmentalhealth.ca). DIVERT Mental Health is partnered with IBM Canada and more than 30 other academic, industry, and NGO organizations across Canada. She also leads an open-access online learning platform for researchers on how to adjudicate more inclusively and supportively (https://www.yorku.ca/research/project/polaris/). Pillai Riddell is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. She was also recently awarded the 2020 Canadian Pain Society’s Outstanding Mentorship Award and the 2019 American Pain Society’s Jeffrey Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children’s Pain.

Vina Mohabir (she/her) is a PhD student at the University of Toronto and The Hospital for Sick Children. As a disabled Indo-Caribbean settler, cancer survivor, and person living with chronic pain, Vina brings lived experience to her scholarship and advocacy. Her work is grounded in intersectional, anti-colonial, and feminist praxis, shaped by more than a decade of community-engaged work across health equity, youth advocacy, and digital innovation. Her doctoral research focuses on reimagining stigma reduction in chronic pain care for equity-deserving youth. Through participatory action research, she is co-designing a digital therapeutic aimed at reducing stigma experienced by Black youth with sickle cell disease. This work is situated within broader systems of anti-Black racism, medical violence, and structural inequity. Vina’s research integrates critical qualitative methods, intersectionality-based analysis, and digital health implementation science. She is passionate about creating spaces where youth expertise is recognized as knowledge and care is redefined through relational, embodied, and culturally grounded approaches. Vina believes research must be accountable to the communities it serves and is committed to amplifying the leadership of diverse youth in shaping the future of pain care.

Dr. Jaris Swidrovich (he/they) is an Assistant Professor and Indigenous Engagement Lead in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. He is a queer, Two Spirit, Saulteaux and Ukrainian pharmacist from Yellow Quill First Nation. His mother was a 60s Scoop survivor and his grandmother and great-grandmother both survived Indian Residential Schools. Dr. Swidrovich is the Co-Scientific Director of the CIHR-funded Saskatchewan Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (SK-NEIHR) called nātawihowin (“art of self-healing” in Cree), which is a First Nations Research Network that supports researchers, students, and First Nations health leaders and communities in Saskatchewan and beyond. Dr. Swidrovich is the founder and chair of the Indigenous Pharmacy Professionals of Canada, and also sits on several other local, provincial, and national boards, including The 519, Pain Ontario, Pain Canada, the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, and is an Institute Advisory Board member for the CIHR Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health. Dr. Swidrovich is an active and engaged citizen of the several communities he belongs to and has been recognized with several awards and honours, including the Governor General’s Gold Medal and the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies Distinguished Dissertation Award for his PhD dissertation, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for service to the community, and the National Patient Care Achievement Award from the Canadian Pharmacists Association. Every member of his family lives with or has lived with chronic pain, which has pushed him to give back in this space. Dr. Swidrovich was a member of the Canadian Pain Task Force and is a current National Advisory Committee member of Pain Canada. He is also a board member of Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) and a founding board member of Pain Ontario.

Dr Anna Hood is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Psychology in the Division of Psychology and Mental Health and the Policy Director at the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology at the University of Manchester. She is a clinical health psychologist and completed her graduate and postdoctoral training in the US and UK at Washington University in St. Louis, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and UCL, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. She has received pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships from the National Institutes of Health. She is currently funded as a PI and Co-I on grants from the UK National Institutes of Health Research, the UK Medical Research Foundation, and the Society for Pediatric Psychology (SPP). Dr Hood’s research examines the biopsychosocial challenges faced by pediatric patients living with pain, with a particular focus on children and young adults living with sickle cell. She has published extensively and collaborates on projects to understand pain from structural perspectives, develop mechanisms for restoration, and create pathways for justice to eliminate pain inequities. Dr Hood was recently awarded the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Ulf Lindblom Young Investigator Prize for Clinical Science for her work with youth living with sickle cell. Dr Hood serves on the IASP Presidential Task Force for Sustainability and the SPP Presidential Task Force for Advocacy. She has also provided expertise on a Network of European Funding for Neuroscience Research project (i.e., Enhancing Trust in Pain Evidence [ENTRUST-PE]), the UK Research and Innovation Medical Research Council Black in Biomedical Research Advisory Group, the American Society of Hematology Roadmap to Improve DEI in Hematology Clinical Trials, and the National Institutes for Health Research James Lind Alliance Sickle Cell Genomics Priority Setting Partnership.