Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq was at the IWK Thursday to announce funding into research projects that will help parents of children with fetal alcohol spectrum and autism spectrum disorders.     
 
Two Maritime projects will be allotted $1.1 million. More than $880-thousand will come from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research “Partnerships for Health System Improvement” program and over $268-thousand will come from private sectors.  
    
One project based at the IWK is receiving $414,858 from the government and $118,486 from funding partners: Queens University, IWK Health Centre, and The Neurodevelopment Network. It will develop a telephone system that will assist FASD parents manage behavioral problems from home on their own time.   
   
Dr. Patrick McGrath, Vice President of research at the IWK, says his team has started already.
    
“The scientific team has begun work already by consulting parents and children with FASD and heath professionals who work with theses families, and we are developing the intervention as we move forward,” said McGrath. “We will evaluate the resulting intervention in a carefully designed randomized controlled trail and subsequently we will disseminate it across the country to families with FASD.

“Families raising a child with FASD will be able to receive services at times that are convenient to them in their homes without any barriers to them,” he said. “The intervention will be assisted by a sophisticated software architecture that will permit personalization of the web-based system that will be supported by trained coaches talking to families on the phone.”  
    
The second program will compare and evaluate the effectiveness of two intense intervention programs in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It is receiving $465,987 from the government and $149,959 from the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation and the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation.   
 
Dr. Isabel Smith with Dalhousie University says her program will help autistic pre-schoolers and their parents prepare for school.  
   
“The goal of the project is to look at the cost effectiveness of two very different programs for young children with autism,” said Smith. “There are a number of ways the programs in the two provinces differ but each has the same objective to improve the lives of young children with autism and their families as much as possible.”
 
CHIR’s Partnerships for Health System Improvement Program will be investing $10.8 million to fund 27 projects across Canada. The government of Canada will give $8.5 million and partners will give $2.2 million.