Written by Taha Awan, member of the 2025 CanFASD Trainee Program.
Hello everyone, my name is Taha Awan. I am currently a first year Master’s Student in Health Sciences, with a focus in Community, Population, and Public Health. I operate out of Wilfrid Laurier University, under the supervision of Dr. Melody Morton Ninomiya.
My thesis in specific has to do with measuring knowledge, attitudes, and practices across the health, justice, education, social services and community organization sectors regarding fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), with all the sectors of this study being located across New Brunswick.
My research interests and how I started in the field of FASD research
My own personal research interests involve trying to help the community in a way that will directly aid them instead of being more theoretical, as well as give something back to the community under the form of knowledge mobilization, which I believe is a critical part of research.
As such, when Dr. Morton Ninomiya offered different projects that I could join once I had been accepted as a Master’s student, I gravitated towards FASD research once I realized that they were a community that had been critically underlooked in terms of the resources they had access to, and were in need of proper support and acknowledgement of their unique strengths and difficulties.
An intersectional approach across sectors
Upon going through the project, I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to apply what I had already been exposed to due to my background in psychology, being the importance of intersectionality. Upon looking through the existing research, I noticed that there was no primary research comparing across all the relevant sectors, despite how important each sector is for individuals with FASD. This was especially relevant as that kind of research had been done for other disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, making me realize that FASD truly is under-reported despite impacting many people.
Using this intersectional method, I hoped to tackle the gaps in research in which differences between sectors and their knowledge, attitudes, and practices are measured and analyzed, in order to best know how to mobilize knowledge to improve support for individuals with FASD. This will be done by both analyzing surveys and interviews with members of each sector, with knowledge mobilization being done alongside the New Brunswick FASD Centre of Excellence.
Early takeaways and knowledge mobilization
Upon looking through the preliminary data, there is a consistent thorough line across participants from all sectors stating that they wish that there was more collaboration across the sectors. Reasons for this include that sectors such as justice feel that they are made to be behind the health sector in terms of the information they receive. Another example is that community organizations feel that they could be operating more efficiently and preventing individuals with FASD from falling through the cracks if they were able to work alongside other sectors without having to wait for extremely long wait times.
In addition, with the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of each sector known, appropriate toolkits for each sector can be created, with plain language reports, presentations and training for frontline workers tailored to each sector in order to better educate workers and address misinformation about FASD.
Making a positive impact
Currently, the data has been collected, which means that already some of the study findings have been shared with people of interest and more will be made the more of the data that is analyzed. Entering the field of FASD research has me excited for the positive impact it will have on the community of individuals with FASD, and I only hope that this research will encourage others to enter the field themselves.
Helpful resources about multi-sectorality and the Centre of Excellence
- About the Centre
- Beyond the Surface: The Hidden Spectrum of FASD in the Justice System
- The Eastern Door Center: re-balancing the wheel–a Two-Eyed Seeing approach to FASD and other disorders related to transgenerational adversity
- A scoping review on how sectors should work together
Taha Awan is a Masters student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Health Sciences, with a focus in Community, Population and Public Health. Through working in the field of FASD, Taha hopes to positively impact individuals with FASD, and to best support them and to help inform the professionals who will be working alongside these individuals.