Leong Centre Rounds: Linda Rothman & M. Anne Harris

DATE: October 19, 2026
TIME: 12:00 – 1:00pm (ET) 
METHOD: Hybrid
REGISTRATION: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/E1Pyvu4yRp

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SPEAKERS: 

Linda Rothman is an Associate Professor in the School of Occupational and Public Health at the Toronto Metropolitan University and an Assistant Professor (status only) at Dalla Lana, School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She is an injury prevention epidemiologist whose current area of focus is in child vulnerable road user injuries in urban environments as a public health issue. Dr Rothman’s research involves multi-disciplinary collaborators from academia, hospitals, not-for-profit organizations, the private sector, school boards, and all levels of the government. She holds several Canadian Institutes of Health Research grants related to the evaluation of new road design modifications such as cycle tracks, reduced speed limits, and automated speed enforcement. She is also an investigator on the Healthy Cities CapaCITY/É implementation science team grant involving researchers working together with municipalities across Canada and Australia to examine the implementation and evaluation of interventions focused on speed reduction and All Ages and Abilities Bicycle Networks.

M. Anne Harris is an epidemiologist focused on studies of transportation, work, environments, and cities’ health. She holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health and is an Associate Professor at the School of Occupational and Public Health at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is an expert in the use of secondary and linked data to examine a range of health outcomes. She has conducted multiple studies using CanCHEC data, and with health data from Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI), including the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS) to study ED visits and Discharge Abstract Database (DAD) to study hospitalizations for transportation injuries.

TITLE: CanCHECKids: A novel application of the Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohorts to examine inequity in child and youth active transportation injuries

DESCRIPTION: 

Transportation injuries are a leading cause of death for Canadian children and adolescents; however, active transportation (bicycling and walking) is an important source of physical activity. The social and neighbourhood environments in which children grow can affect their risk of road traffic. The Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohorts (CanCHECs) link the Canadian census, hospitalization and death records, and postal code data, providing a unique opportunity to study both individual- and area-level risk factors for active transportation injuries in children. In this talk, Drs Harris and Rothman will share their work using CanCHECs to create a child and youth cohort of over 4 million children (CanCHECKids). They will discuss findings from two recent publications: one prospective cohort focused on individual/household determinants and a second nested case-control study focused on area-level indicators. They will examine the differences between the individual and area-level results and the implications of these findings for injury prevention.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Describe the CanCHECKids child/adolescent cohort
• Explain the importance of considering exposure to transportation modes in studying risk factors for transportation injury, and the limited options for doing so in large population data.
• Understand the associations between child active transportation injuries and inequities in both individual/household characteristics and area-level built environment characteristics.
• Recognize the important contribution of linked databases in identifying and understanding inequities and informing targeted intervention strategies for the prevention of child active transportation injuries.