UNB's Integrated Health Initiative is building a new model for education and research to help solve New Brunswick's biggest health challenges. From cancer outcomes and patient treatment plans to child and family well-being, IHI researchers like Dr. Maggie Brown are at the forefront of that mission.
When Dr. Maggie Brown (BSc'15) saw a posting for a tenure-track position with the Integrated Health Initiative's (IHI) bachelor of health program at the University of New Brunswick's Saint John campus, it felt like the stars had aligned.
"It honestly felt like a calling," she said. "It matched directly to my previous training, and I really felt there was a need for someone like me with an interdisciplinary background, because IHI is built on interdisciplinary collaboration."
Brown grew up in Saint John and completed her bachelor of science degree at UNB's Saint John campus in 2015.
"I thought I'd go to medical school," she said. "I wrote the MCAT, did the interviews, but then I didn't get in. I loved medicine, and I knew I wanted to help people, but I realized that maybe being a medical doctor wasn't for me."
Brown set off for Dalhousie University to pursue a master of science degree in statistics.
"I really like stats. I love the usefulness of data and the power of information."
There, Brown began collaborating with the faculty of medicine's Perinatal Epidemiology Research Unit at the IWK Health Centre.
"There's something about pregnancy that's so exciting. It's such a miraculous part of life," she said. "I found it fascinating to follow women from conception to birth and to study how different factors might influence outcomes for their children."
Brown continued this work, earning an interdisciplinary PhD combining statistics and epidemiology in 2022.
By that time, she was ready to move home to Saint John. The timing couldn't have been better.
"When I saw that I could marry stats and epidemiology at UNB, that I didn't have to pick one or the other, I thought it was a perfect fit," Brown said.
Within IHI, Brown's role blends teaching and research. She instructs in the bachelor of health program, including courses in statistics, data analytics and research methods. She both developed and teaches the university's first courses in epidemiology and public health data analysis, and she coordinates Experiences in Health, a new practicum course that gives students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in different health related fields.
She's passionate about giving students hands-on experience with population-level data, which is crucial to identifying trends and patterns; and understanding, assessing and addressing the needs of varying populations.
"My whole philosophy is to expose students to the power of data. I always tell them that with population-level data, they have the ability to answer big and important questions about New Brunswickers."
Brown's teaching approach carries over to her research. Working with DataNB, she and her students study maternal and child health using provincial administrative data, including projects examining aspects of New Brunswick's Health Families, Healthy Babies program, a public health initiative that supports families in New Brunswick, particularly first-time families at highest risk for poor outcomes.
Brown is also involved with the GET READY 0-20, a collaboration among researchers, clinicians and government partners working with DataNB that follows New Brunswick children as they grow, tracking their health, education and development into adulthood.
The project uses New Brunswick's linked administrative datasets to identify what puts children at risk and what helps them thrive; map key intervention points and support long-term policy planning across departments.
The team is also working with provincial partners to broaden access to additional datasets, including justice and social services, to follow youth trajectories more comprehensively.
"The goal is to understand those trajectories and figure out what we can do earlier to change them," Brown said. "It's the kind of research that can support meaningful public health policy."
The province's unique ability to link data across systems makes this work possible.
"In New Brunswick, we can follow a child's journey across systems, from their prenatal information to their school records, to hospital admissions and even their physician visits. In most provinces, those pieces of information sit in separate silos. Here, it is all in one place, which means we can actually understand the bigger picture" Brown said.
Ultimately, through her research projects with IHI and its partners, Brown is looking to get New Brunswick more involved in national health research.
"New Brunswick is often left out of national conversations because of our size," she said. "But we have something valuable to contribute. The data we have here is high quality, and it matters," she said.
"I want to help put New Brunswick on the map."
