UKRAINIAN RESOURCE and DEVELOPMENT CENTRE
Chair of International Health
Promoting education and public interest in international health, conducting international health research related to Ukraine and Eastern Europe, supporting faculty members and students with an interest in international health—these are some of the activities undertaken by the Chair of International Health.
Since 2020, the Chair of International Health has worked on scholarly projects connected to international health, primarily in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Created through an endowment from the Ukrainian Foundation for College and Education, which has a long-standing partnership with the university, the position is housed in the Faculty of Nursing.
Meet Dr. Gail Low
On September 1, 2024, Dr. Gail Low, an associate professor in the Faculty of Nursing, was appointed Chair of International Health.
The foundation of Dr. Low’s research is quality living in later life, with a broad range of influencing factors, including religion and spirituality, place, health, work and supportive relationships. Dr. Low was trained by world-renowned gerontologists and World Health Organization quality-of-life scholars from Canada and Norway. Dr. Low has collaborated with up-and-coming scholars from Thailand, Pakistan, America, Spain and Ireland and at conferences from London, England, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has served as a reviewer for a host of international journals, including BMC Geriatrics, Quality of Life Research and Research in Nursing & Health.
Dr. Low is the principal investigator for a nation-wide study on mentally healthy living after social distancing, funded by the RTOERO Foundation. Her international team of investigators spans significant geographic distances from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver to the Memorial University in Newfoundland and from the William James Center for Research in Portugal to the Federal University of São Carlos and Itajubá in Brazil.
Dr. Low and her research team are exploring research opportunities related to mental health promotion with partners in and for Ukraine and with attendees at their 2024 Canadian Association on Gerontology & Geriatrics conference symposium. They continue to collaborate with non-for-profit mental health champions in different parts of Canada to raise awareness about mentally healthy living after COVID-19.
Dr. Low looks forward to sharing her expertise in courses about nursing leaders and research methods and statistics with MacEwan University students.
How it all began
In 1993, the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre began organizing and participating in nursing faculty exchanges with Ternopil State Medical University in Ukraine. In 2008, building upon the success of the exchange program, URDC, together with the Faculty of Health and Community Studies, decided to extend the program to other countries and organize student exchanges.
A more extensive program required additional infrastructure and sustained funding. That’s where the Ukrainian Foundation for College Education stepped in, providing leadership, donating funds and approaching Edmonton philanthropists Drs. Peter and Doris Kule to contribute to the project. The generous $100,000 donations of UFCE and the Kules were “double-matched” by the MacEwan University Foundation, establishing a $600,000 endowment for the Chair of International Health in 2009, with the first chair being appointed in 2020.
Past chairs
As past Chair in International Health, Dr. Burgess-Pinto was heavily involved in the partnership with Ternopil National Medical University (TNMU) in Ukraine and the Catholic University of the Maule in Chile that focused on COVID-19 and explored the perceptions surrounding nursing in Ukraine. She also taught a Collaborative Online International Learning course for MacEwan University and TNMU students: HLST 400: Global Health Perspectives.
Dr. Burgess-Pinto is part of the interdisciplinary Canada-wide study, “The Impact of Temporary Status on the Settlement Experience of Newcomer Ukrainian Youth in Canada Arriving Under the CUAET Visa.” She also leads a nursing research project, Mothering in Exile, exploring the experiences of Ukrainian mothers of school-aged children who have come to Canada with the CUAET (Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel) visa program.