by Allan Gotlib,BSc,DC
Canadian Jean-Sèbastien Blouin, DC,MSc, has been awarded a prestigious three-year fellowship at Laval University in Quèbec. The award is based on academic and research excellence as judged by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). This new research training position is funded by a partnership between the CIHR and the Fondation Chiropratique du Québec (FCQ). CIHR is one of the largest health financing institutes in Canada, with an annual budget of $500 million.
The fellowship was made possible last year under the leadership of Guy Beauchamp,DC, FCQ president, and Jacques Parent, the rector of the Université du Québec à Trois-Riviéres (UQTR) from 1983 to 1993.
Dr. Blouin is one of a number of researchers to benefit from this new partnership. The fellowship will allow Dr. Blouin to complete his doctoral studies, while having the support needed to attend several international meetings in his field of research. He has already participated in a presentation on eye/head coordination and space under the direction of Dr. Jean Blouin in Marseille, France, and assisted in a course on neural control of motor behaviour in Umea, Sweden conducted by world-renowned researchers.
The FCQ/CIHR partnership is an incentive to young chiropractors to attain full-time research careers. Partnership programs with public institutes will ensure that talented chiropractic investigators have access to the best training opportunities and resources to address the challenges faced by Canadians, particularly chiropractic patients. Of course, support by the CIHR will help to increase our credibility with the government, academic researchers and the public. I have also been involved in the facilitation of a partnership between the Canadian Chiropractic Association and the CIHR. Such are the first steps in public financing of chiropractic research to develop chiropractic within the health care and university systems.
Dr. Blouin is a full-time doctoral student at Laval university. He graduated from UQTR in 1999, and completed a master's degree in "neural control of motor synchronization" in 2001 at Laval under the direction of Dr. Chantal Bard. His degree focused on the PET neuroimaging technique, performed at the McConnell Brain Imaging Center in Montreal, where he collaborated with Drs. Jacques Paillard (Marseille, France) and Julien Doyon (Université de Montréal). He presented the results from his experiment at the Human Brain Mapping conference held in June 2001 in Brighton, UK.
As part of his PhD training at Laval, Dr. Blouin's research project will focus on the vestibular and cervical proprioceptive consequences of whiplash injuries. He is under the supervision of Dr. Normand Teasdale, an internationally recognized researcher in the field of motor control. Another member of the recently formed team is Martin Descarreaux,DC, who also received a scholarship from FCQ and is completing a doctoral degree. They have already obtained access to a list of whiplash-injured patients from the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ). The Group of Research in Analysis of Movement and Ergonomics (GRAME) laboratory, directed by Dr. Teasdale, organizes students and researchers from different fields such as kinesiology, engineering, psychology and chiropractic, and is dedicated to the study of motor control in different populations.
Dr. Blouin's project will describe specifically the motor deficits experienced by whiplash patients, and is the first step in global understanding of the whiplash population and eventually identifying appropriate treatments for this particular population.
Allan Gotlib,BSc,DC
Canadian Chiropractic Association
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
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