New faces at McGill (Page 2)

Getting kids fit

Enrique Garcia fights a fat culture with physical education
Claudio Calligaris

Eve Krakow

When Enrique Garcia was growing up in San Sebastian in the Basque region of Spain, it was very rare for him and his friends to eat fast food. Weight just wasn't a big concern, either, when he went on to earn his undergraduate degree in Madrid and work as a physical education teacher and sports coach. But now, all that is changing.

"As patterns of living in Europe become more similar to those of North America, the activity and obesity rates are becoming similar," says Garcia, a new assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education.

Garcia first came to Canada twelve years ago to do a master's degree in sport pedagogy at Université Laval. He then completed a PhD at the University of Alberta, where he focused on the psychological and motivational aspects of youth participation in sports, and became interested in models of human development. Yet it was while working at the Centre for Active Living in Edmonton that he became increasingly aware of issues of healthy living. "At the centre, we did a lot of promotion of physical activity, using a population health approach," he explains.

The problem of overweight and obesity is no longer confined to North America. Garcia notes that a recent report by the World Health Organization called obesity a "global epidemic." The problem is even cropping up in developing countries, with poor people turning to fast food for cheap meals. And while Garcia finds it a bit too simplistic to blame computers and television, he says our increasingly sedentary lifestyle is certainly a factor.

Although he's only been back in Quebec for a few months, he sees a greater focus on helping youth develop healthy lifestyles since he left eight years ago. Health education is now part of the elementary and secondary school curriculum. "There's a lot of discussion on how to make the health care system more sustainable, and one way is to focus more on prevention," he says. "I think the school is one of the primary settings for family and health education."

His current research looks at how social interactions with other people in physical education and sports settings contribute to how children internalize values, ideas and behaviour related to physical activity. He is also analyzing data from various Health Canada surveys to track the impact of participation in physical education and sports activities on children's psycho-social development.

It comes as no surprise that Garcia himself likes to stay fit. Unfortunately, an elbow injury is keeping him away from his passion, tennis. But he also enjoys cycling and cross-country skiing. And he plays guitar. "In Edmonton, one of my favourite activities was getting together with friends to play guitar and sing Latin American and Spanish songs."

One of Garcia's proudest achievements is having completed his three degrees in three languages (Spanish, French and English). But beyond the certificates on the wall, the most important part of his graduate years was meeting and working with people from different cultures and backgrounds, and being exposed to different ways of thinking. He suspects that his interest in languages and cultures has had an impact on the direction of his career. "I think it has made me more sensitive to broader issues, such as how economy, gender and culture have an impact on health."

On the dance between host and parasite

Tim Geary studies the secrets of schistosomes at the Institute of Parasitology
Owen Egan

Patrick McDonagh

"I've just written my first grant application in twenty years," says Tim Geary. "Most people complain about it but for me it's fun. I get to think about research, to interact with students and post-docs, and to talk about results and plan future research." Many years have passed since Geary last applied for grant dollars. His new job marks a return to academia after twenty years leading industry research in veterinary parasitology with Upjohn Pharmaceuticals in Kalamazoo, Michigan. When the company was purchased by Pfizer in 2002, he moved into an administrative position in the company's animal health division. "But I knew within a month it wasn't for me," he said. Geary joined the Institute of Parasitology this September as a Canada Research Chair in Parasite Biotechnology. "Here I can develop ideas I've been thinking about for a long time, but couldn't pursue in industry."

Geary earned his doctorate in pharmacology from the University of Michigan but quickly sidestepped into post-doctoral research in tropical medicine. "At that time, a culture system for malaria had just been developed, meaning you could study it in the laboratory. So I wound up doing molecular research on malaria, and did plenty of field work in Sudan as well. Opportunities in tropical medicine are extremely limited, but as I wasn't married I didn't have to worry about a job." Parasites are an enormous problem throughout most of the world, but not in developed countries, where governments tend to invest in locally prominent diseases like heart disease or cancer. After completing his post-doctoral research and still intrigued by parasites — and with a family — Geary found himself moving into the private sector.

If academic positions are rare, parasites themselves are ubiquitous. "There are zillions of them," says Geary, "but we can resist almost all, as many are species specific. But we have parasites that affect us and no other animal, and those parasites can be very closely related to species that cannot affect us." Swimmers' itch, for example, is caused by the parasites schistosomes (or blood flukes), and three species, found in Africa and South-East Asia, affect humans. Canadian and American lakes have schistosomes too, but it is strictly a waterfowl parasite and is easily killed by the human immune system. Even to the trained eye peering through a microscope, human and duck schistosomes are indistinguishable.

So why can one parasite survive in a human host, while the other cannot? "Only in the last few years have we had the technical tools to begin to analyze this dance between host and parasite," says Geary. "It is really wonderful, interesting stuff from both basic research and intervention perspectives, because if we can find the molecular event that distinguishes successful from unsuccessful parasites, we have the key to treatment." Geary will be focusing his research on the human parasite that causes the disease commonly known as elephantiasis. The parasite, a worm that lives in the lymph glands, changes the flow of lymph, causing extremities to swell. Close to 120 million people carry the infection, while several hundred million more live in areas where it is a threat. Geary will look at the proteins the parasite secretes, some of which are known to affect the human immune system. "The institute has the perfect equipment for this application, and the parasite's genome has been sequenced, so we are all set to go ahead. I expect it is going to be a lot of fun."

Geary has a long connection to the Institute of Parasitology, visiting almost annually since 1987. "The institute is a gem, almost unique in North America. I've always treasured this place," he enthuses. "Few people are as lucky as I am — it really is remarkable to be here."

Health policy around the globe

Jody Heymann is McGill's Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy
Claudio Calligaris

Mark Reynolds

Health care is a perennial concern in Canada, subject to royal commissions, Supreme Court decisions, elections debates and countless gallons of ink spilt on the opinion pages of the country's newspapers.

Jody Heymann, Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy seems likely to become an important voice in this dialogue. As Founding Director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy Heymann brings a global approach that she honed as Director of Policy at the Harvard Center for Society and Health.

Heymann started at McGill in August.

Using comparative data from countries around the world, Heymann seeks to analyze how social conditions — poverty, labour trends, urbanization, to name a few — affect the health of families, especially children. The research network she has established involves a team of academics operating all around the world, and the work hasn't stopped with Heymann's move to Montreal. Heymann spoke to the Reporter from a cell phone as she was travelling through the hills of New Hampshire on her way to meet colleagues in the States.

"It's tremendously exciting to be coming to McGill," she said. "We're focusing on social conditions and how social policy impacts health. McGill brings enormous strength in both social and health sciences to this endeavour."

A medical doctor herself, Heymann has a long publication record in the field, including Global Inequalities at Work: Work's Impact on the Health of Individuals, Families and Societies and the provocatively titled Can Working Families Ever Win?

At McGill Heymann will also be collating an index of data from 180 countries to measure how national policies serve the health and development of children and families.

"Practically no one has done this kind of work in lower income or developing countries," said Heymann.

Global trends like increasing involvement in the workforce and urbanization will be joined in Heymann's research by the policy ramifications of the AIDS pandemic and AIDS orphans in developing countries.

The value of comparing data like this might not seem obvious at first: Sweden does not face the AIDS rates or poverty of a country like Nigeria, nor does Peru have the resources of Norway to implement a cradle-to-grave social safety net. But Heymann said there are always lessons to be learned.

While the health care and social policies of other countries might seem to be of only academic interest to Canadians, increasing globalization makes them more and more relevant to policymakers, as multilateral trade and labour mobility agreements mean that the employment and health practices of one country can have a real effect on another.

"In the United States the argument is always made that in a globalizing world they need to remain competitive. They can't afford things like paid sick leave or paid maternity leave because it wasn't economically viable. But in our research we found that of the 168 countries we looked at, 165 have some form of paid maternity leave."