2024 Rising Star Early Career Award in Health Services and Policy Research
Recognizing emerging Health Services and Policy Researchers
The CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR-IHSPR) is pleased to announce that Dr. Laura Sikstrom and Dr. Oluwatomilayo (Tito) Daodu are the recipients of the 2024 Rising Star Early Career Award in Health Services and Policy Research.
This award recognizes the excellence of emerging health services and policy researchers at the early career stage and awarded to the highest ranking Early-Career Investigator in CIHR’s Project Grant competition working within the mandate of IHSPR. The prize entails a $25,000 supplemental grant to support research and/or knowledge mobilization for the duration of 1 year.
In recognizing and supporting research excellence, IHSPR Career Awards are a key strategy to help advance IHSPR’s 2021-26 Strategic Plan: Accelerate Health Care System Transformation through Research to Achieve the Quadruple Aim and Health Equity for All and CIHR’s 2021-31 Strategic Plan: A Vision for a Healthier Future.
About the Recipients
Dr. Laura Sikstrom
Dr. Laura Sikstrom is a medical anthropologist and Scientist in the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and is a status-only Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Sikstrom co-leads the Predictive Care Lab, an interdisciplinary research team exploring AI, health service delivery, and social justice. Much of her current research focuses on the growing emphasis on “Fair AI” within the computer sciences, particularly the range of sociotechnical solutions designed to mitigate algorithmic bias. Through ethnographic and computational approaches, she helps shape AI systems that are not only technically robust but also socially responsible—promoting fair, inclusive, and patient-centered mental health care.
As part of the work on algorithmic fairness, Dr. Sikstrom also investigates the responsible use of sociodemographic data in AI applications for mental health. She also collaborates on global digital health initiatives and develops training materials that integrate social science perspectives into computational workflows from within learning health systems.
Dr. Sikstrom’s CIHR-funded research will rethink AI’s role in psychiatric violence risk assessment. Rather than using AI to label individuals as high-risk, the project applies machine learning to uncover the factors driving false positive predictions—exposing systemic biases that lead to the overprediction of violence. The team will co-design a clinical decision support system that provides clinicians with contextualized, bias-aware insights, reducing unnecessary interventions while improving accuracy. By shifting from individual risk prediction to systemic bias detection, this research advances a new paradigm for AI in mental health care—one that prioritizes fairness, health equity, and the well-being of both patients and staff.
Dr. Oluwatomilayo (Tito) Daodu
Dr. Oluwatomilayo (Tito) Daodu is a pediatric surgeon at Alberta Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. She also serves as the Assistant Dean of Research and Scholarship for the Precision Equity and Social Justice Office. She is the first Black woman to practice pediatric surgery in Canada and is widely recognized for her leadership in health equity and anti-racism advocacy.
Born in Nigeria and raised in Winnipeg, Dr. Daodu earned her medical degree from the University of Manitoba, followed by residency and fellowship training at the University of Calgary. She furthered her expertise with a Master of Public Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in Global Surgical Care from the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Daodu’s research focuses on eliminating disparities in surgical care, improving surgical access for rural and Indigenous communities, and integrating anti-racism education into medical training. She leads the Equity Pillar within the Equity Quality Innovation and Safety (EQuIS) research platform at the University of Calgary, where she collaborates on impactful health systems research. As a principal or co-investigator, she has secured numerous research grants, including funding for projects addressing Indigenous health equity, structural competency in medical education, and surgical safety for marginalized populations. She is a key leader in national and institutional EDI committees and led the Canadian Association of Pediatric Surgeons’ publications on anti-racism in surgical care.
Dr. Daodu’s CIHR-funded research aims to address the inequities that racialized patients face in the surgical setting, improving their treatment and involvement in their care by identifying and addressing the effects of racism on surgical outcomes. By leveraging existing tools like the Surgical Safety Checklist and consent processes, the study seeks to empower patients, ensuring that they are treated fairly and have greater agency in their care, ultimately enhancing both patient experience and surgical outcomes.
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