Vicki Kristman

Dr. Kristman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Lakehead University and the Inaugural Director for a new Research Institute at Lakehead University: EPID@Work – Enhancing the Prevention of Injury and Disability@Work. She also holds appointments in the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto. She holds a doctoral degree in epidemiology from the University of Toronto and completed the CIHR Work Disability Prevention strategic training program as a postdoctoral fellow at the University Health Network in Toronto. In 2014, Dr. Kristman was awarded a prestigious CIHR New Investigator Award for her program of research on “Preventing Work Disability through Accommodation”. She is currently leading projects to identify factors associated with Indigenous work, health and safety, and to determine factors associated with supervisors’ support for providing work accommodations for workers with mental health disorders. Dr. Kristman is the Principal Investigator on an ongoing SSHRC Partnership Development Grant entitled “Understanding labour force participation, work productivity and disability in the Indigenous context: a partnership with the Nokiiwin Tribal Council. She will collaborate with Dr. Cullen and a PhD student to engage local Indigenous groups to build a local Indigenous Coastal Communities partnership. The partnership will develop a “two-eyed seeing” approach to 1) understand the burden of the problem of work disability in coastal communities; and 2) identify opportunities for the development of novel culturally-sensitive policies and practices to strengthen Indigenous workers and workplaces to increase labour force participation and productivity, and reduce work disability.