Congratulations to Dr. Vicky Bungay, Professor and Associate Director of Research and Graduate Studies, who has been named among the new awardees for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's (CIHR) Spring 2026 Project Grants.
August 7, 2026
The Project Grant program is designed to capture ideas with the greatest potential to advance health-related fundamental or applied knowledge, health research, health care, health systems, and/or health outcomes. It supports research projects proposed and conducted by individual researchers or groups of researchers, at any career stage, in all areas of health. The best ideas may stem from new, incremental, innovative, and/or high-risk lines of inquiry; or knowledge translation approaches.
Amount: $100,000
Co-Investigators: Greyson, Devon; Guta, Adrian; Havaei, Farinaz; Kassam, Shahin; Laforet, Lady; McBride, Bronwyn G; Trudell-Davis, Brandin; Wilson, Michael G; Wu, Angela
Holding Up the System: Workforce Precarity in Canada's Not-for-Profit Health and Social Service Sector
Not-for-profit organizations (NFPOs) are a vital yet under-recognized part of Canada's health care system. NFPOs support women facing gender-based violence, homelessness, migration and settlement challenges, sex work-related stigma, and other intersecting forms of marginalization. As trusted community providers, they help bridge gaps in access to health, housing, legal, and social supports and play a critical role in promoting continuity of care and health equity for women. Despite these essential contributions, NFPOs face persistent and worsening workforce challenges, including unstable funding, chronic understaffing, high turnover, and growing service demands amid rising rates of violence against women. The workforce is highly gendered and routinely exposed to trauma, placing staff at increased risk of burnout, moral distress, and vicarious trauma, often without adequate organizational supports. Workforce instability threatens staff health and organizations' capacity to deliver equitable, high-quality services to marginalized women. The primary goal of this study is to examine how gendered social and organizational conditions shape workforce sustainability in these organizations, and how these conditions affect staff wellbeing and service delivery. Using a comparative case study approach across diverse women's service settings, the study will generate intersectional, SGBA+-informed evidence on nonprofit labour conditions, staffing precarity, and occupational health risks. Through ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and document analysis, this community-engaged project will examine how services are delivered in practice and how organizational, funding, and policy environments support or undermine workforce sustainability. Findings will provide timely policy-relevant evidence to inform health systems planning, workforce supports and gender-responsive interventions aimed at strengthening community services and advancing women's health equity.
