2024 Grant Recipients

Lorena Vehling 
MSc, RM

Lorena is a Registered Midwife providing midwifery care in Thunder Bay Ontario, she is a Professional Staff member at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Clinical Professor (Adjunct) at McMaster University. Her research will utilize BORN data to determine if newborns exposed to antidepressant medications in pregnancy and opioids in labour are at an increased risk for poor neonatal outcomes.

Ness Dixon
RM, MPH

Ness Dixon is a registered midwife at the Midwives Clinic of East York-Don Mills in Toronto with privileges at Michael Garron Hospital. Ness’s project seeks to map the sexual and reproductive health services currently available to trans and gender diverse individuals in Toronto and to undertake an equity focused participatory needs assessment to determine if midwives are well suited to fill these gaps.

Kirsty Bourret             
B.HSc. (midwifery), PhD

Dr. Kirsty Bourret is currently living in Thunder Bay, located on traditional lands of the Anishinabek Nation and the traditional territory of Fort William First Nation, signatory to the Robinson-Superior Treaty of 1850. She is a research affiliate with McMaster Midwifery Research Centre, and Karolinska Institutet Sweden, and external adjunct faculty at Lakehead University.

Kirsty in partnership with Lisa Bishop, Helle Moeller, Patrick Timony and Susan James will seek to report on the characteristics, locations and outcomes of people and infants in Northern Ontario with midwives involved in their care and utilize the evidence to collaborate with key stakeholders in Northern Ontario to develop recommendations for the sustainability of the profession and the provision of culturally safe, equitable midwifery care.