Grant: Health System Impact Fellowships - PostDoc Central Canada 2-year

Military families of neurodiverse children face dual challenges in wellness and in neurodiversity-centred help-seeking due to repeated relocations. Navigation is a barrier-reducing approach that facilitates help-seeking. The Department of National Defence/DND aims to shape wellness and navigation policies for military families by developing and sharing their findings with decision-makers and community members across Canada. Despite these efforts, the knowledge use by 3 key user groups-parents, military/civilian service providers, government/decision-makers-for high quality family care has not yet been defined. This gap makes it difficult for policymakers to know what solutions to prioritise. My fellowship addresses this major gap. I will support DND by applying the Knowledge to Action Framework to co-create a new military family framework. Our mixed-methods research will use surveys of Military parents, a community services database, and interviews/focus groups. Phase 1 will explore how being military parents of neurodiverse children relates to family wellness in the last decade and see if Canadian policies protect parents from negative wellness outcomes. Phase 2 will highlight geographic gaps in community services that will help us understand barriers/facilitators to healthcare integration. Phase 3 will prioritise possible solutions to improve knowledge use through conversations and democratic consensus with key user groups. Phase 1, 2 data will be analysed using standard and advanced statistical analyses. Phase 3 data will be analysed using thematic analysis. This 3-phase project will help deliver on the national priority: 1) to better support military families; 2) improve navigation; 3) enhance healthcare integration to ease deployment/relocation burden. From the project start to the end, an expert/advisory panel will collectively plan for integrated knowledge use and policy impact.