By Donna E. Stewart, M.D., FRCPC,
Dr. Grace completed her PhD in 2001 in Applied Social Psychology, thus is 9 years past her final academic degree. Since then, she has been an active researcher in the field of psychosomatic medicine, first as a post-doctoral fellow then as a Scientist at the University Health Network, Toronto General Research Institute in Ontario, Canada. She is now also a tenured position at York University, and several other cross-appointments.
She currently has 70 papers published or in press in journals with moderate to high impact factors. One of these papers was recently recognized for the Dorfman award for best original article published in the journal Psychosomatics. According to ISI global citation thresholds, 37.5% of her articles are categorized as “highly cited”. This is in addition to 6 symposia, 78 abstracts, 23 presentations, 32 invited presentation, 7 government report or Clinical Practice Guideline chapters, and 8 papers under review (plus 2 invited for revision and resubmission).
Her strong external funding history totals almost $5.5 million dollars, including 2 operating grants as Principal Investigator from our national health research funding agency called CIHR, which is the Canadian equivalent of NIH, as well as a career salary grant.
She is actively involved in graduate training and providing service to the community. All but one of her graduate students has held external funding scholarships, and all have defended within the recommended program duration. Her service activities include membership on the Canadian Association of Cardiac Rehabilitation Board of Directors, and on chronic disease management working groups at the provincial and regional level. She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention.
Her research program centers on psychosomatic issues in cardiovascular care and cardiac health services. Specifically, she investigates (1) the influence of emotional health on the recovery process from acute cardiac events and procedures, and (2) how these psychological factors influence access to and participation in secondary preventive services.
Arguably the most meritorious publication which she has contributed to the field to date explored the question of depression timing in the presence of acute coronary syndromes with regard to onset, history and persistence, and how this is associated with mortality. Depression is associated with increased morbidity and mortality among coronary artery disease (CAD) patients, after controlling for severity and prognostic indicators. With outstanding questions regarding mechanisms, screening and treatment, this work was undertaken. The manuscript presented data from a cohort of over 900 cardiac patients from multiple hospitals. Administrative databases were used to ascertain five-year mortality rates. After adjusting for prognostic indicators such as cardiac disease severity, previous medical history and smoking, depressive symptomatology during hospitalization was significantly predictive of mortality (HR=1.9), but depressive history was not. This work was published in 2005 in the American Journal of Cardiology. The findings were highlighted in Nature Clinical Practice: Cardiovascular Medicine (2006, 3[1], p.6), and the paper has been cited 45 times to date. In particular, it has incited a line of replication studies starting with a paper by deJonge et al. published in JACC(48 [11], pp. 2204-2208).
She has since tested the relationship of depression onset timing to in-hospital complications. This manuscript is currently in press in the journal Psychosomatics. She has also undertaken a meta-analysis to investigate whether a new onset of depression post-CAD is linked to greater mortality and morbidity among CAD patients. Results confirmed it was (RR=2.13) and this paper is submitted to JAMA.
In general, she has outstanding achievements for a researcher only 9 years after her final degree. Dr Grace is an extraordinarily productive as a researcher, a gifted teacher and a delightful, generous and warm colleague!