Limerick native, Dr Elaine Toomey from the School of Psychology at NUI Galway, has received a prestigious award for her specific area of research from the Irish Canadian University Foundation.
Originally from Castletroy in Limerick, Dr Toomey is a graduate of both University Limerick and UCD.
Dr Elaine Toomey from the Health Behaviour Change Research Group, led by Professor Molly Byrne at the School of Psychology, received the ‘Irish Canadian University Foundation James M Flaherty Early Career Researcher Award’. Dr Toomey received the award to conduct further research on the adaptation of ‘Football Fans in Training’ (FFIT), an effective health behaviour change intervention that used Scottish professional football clubs to engage with overweight and obese men. The ‘Hockey Fit’ intervention was recently developed by Dr Rob Petrella and Dr Dawn Gill in Western University, Ontario to adapt the FFIT project to ice-hockey, within a Canadian context.
Dr Toomey’s award will enable her to visit Western University and explore the Canadian ‘Hockey Fit’ intervention with a specific focus on how FFIT components were adapted to suit a different sporting and cultural context, and inform how this might be used in an Irish context. Dr Toomey will also spend time in the Centre for Implementation Research in the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute to maximise how knowledge from her visit to Western University can be used to inform adaptation and translation into an Irish setting, using a structured and theory-based approach.
Speaking about her award, Dr Elaine Toomey at NUI Galway, said: “I am delighted and incredibly honoured to receive this award. As well as facilitating my own learning and development, this award will enable me to establish new collaborations between the Health Behaviour Change Research Group at NUI Galway and researchers from Western University, as well as strengthening existing relationships between our group and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. It will also enable Canadian expertise in obesity research and knowledge translation to be disseminated to an Irish audience.”
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