Rebecca J Haines-Saah
Biographic Data
| ID | 139543 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rebecca J Haines-Saah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rebecca J |
| FAMILY NAME | Haines-Saah |
| SIGNATURE | HAINES-SAAH R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Calgary |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4174-3102 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 100 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Associations Between Cannabis Use and Mental Health in Patients Accessing Treatment for Substance Use Disorders: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study
Background: Cannabis use is common among individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs), yet its relationship with mental health characteristics in treatment-seeking populations remains unclear. Objectives: This study examined associations between cannabis use and mental health in patients seeking SUD treatment, to understand whether cannabis use relates to clinical characteristics relevant to SUD care. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey w…
Beyond struggle: A strengths-based qualitative study of cannabis use among queer and trans youth in Québec
Our analysis illustrates many ways in which cannabis use (and non-use) features in QT youth's efforts to survive and thrive. As a result, we encourage loved ones, clinicians, researchers and policy makers to adopt a view of QT cannabis use that is expansive and inclusive of QT youth's strengths
Reconceptualizing cannabis use risks in the context of health and social inequities: Insights from a qualitative study with young people in Canada
This study underscores opportunities for a reconsideration or reconceptualization of risks in the context of youth cannabis use, so that approaches to supporting youth who use cannabis are more resonant and credible with those who experience health and social inequities. Findings offer direction for youth cannabis policy and programming, including to decenter individual pathology, support harm reduction goals, and further consider relationships b…
Scapegoated communities, shared struggles: A call for solidarity with people who use drugs and queer and trans people
Youth and young adult cannabis research – Critical approaches to advancing the field
Engaging families and parent advocates in research on substance use and drug policy reform: Guiding principles from a Canadian community‐academic partnership
Canada is in the midst of a public health emergency in drug poisoning (overdose) deaths. In this context parents, and especially mothers, of those who have died from drug poisoning have mobilised to advocate for urgent responses and drug policy reforms. To document this emerging women‐led advocacy, we initiated a community‐academic research partnership with three parent groups representing families in Canada bereaved by drug‐related deaths. In th…
Defining a public health approach to substance use: Perspectives from professionals and practitioners across Canada
Empirically unpacking multi-stakeholder understandings of a PHA to substance use can help to inform a more cohesive definition and build the consensus needed for more effective, coordinated, and community-led responses to substance use. Future work, especially qualitative research, will provide richer and more practical understandings of a PHA to substance use
Advancing socioecological mental health promotion intervention: A mixed methods exploration of Phase 1 Agenda Gap findings
Introduction: Protecting and promoting the mental health of youth under 30 years of age is a priority, globally. Yet investment in mental health promotion, which seeks to strengthen the determinants of positive mental health and wellbeing, remains limited relative to prevention, treatment, and recovery. The aim of this paper is to contribute empirical evidence to guide innovation in youth mental health promotion, detailing the early outcomes of A…
Cannabis education resources for parents: An environmental scan and critical content analysis in the context of legalization
Cannabis was recently legalized for adult use in Canada and many American states. In this context, there is a pressing need for educational resources – aimed at youth and their parents/caregivers – to reduce potential harm. However, little is known about the current state of such resources. This paper presents findings of an environmental scan, mapping and critically analyzing the present landscape of cannabis resources for parents/caregivers. We…
Teens Talk Vaping: A co-produced participatory study exploring teens’ reflections on vaping experiences and exposures in their everyday environments
Increasing youth vaping is a serious public health concern. • Teens Talk Vaping project aimed to co-produce research about teen vaping with teens. • Teen co-researchers facilitated 7 online focus groups with teens across Canada. • Analysis generated five themes revealing how vaping is experienced as ‘everywhere’. • Vaping prevention efforts must be equity-centred and youth-driven
Moving on in uncertain times: A goodbye
A cautionary tale: University institutes of public health must “walk the talk”
Public health is, and has long been, defined as the art and science of promoting health and preventing illness through organized efforts of society.This definition and scope convey certain elements and values, which distinguish public health from other fields of scholarship and practice (CPHA, 2017).These include population-level thinking, a commitment to health equity and its foundations in social justice, and an upstream focus on root causes of…
Flawed reports can harm: The case of supervised consumption services in Alberta
Supervised consumption services have been scaled up within Canada and internationally as an ethical imperative in the context of a public health emergency. A large body of peer-reviewed evidence demonstrates that these services prevent poisoning deaths, reduce infectious disease transmission risk behaviour, and facilitate clients' connections to other health and social services. In 2019, the Alberta government commissioned a review of the socioec…
Response to “Operational and contextual barriers to accessing supervised consumption services in two Canadian cities”
When a Child Dies: Racialized Father’s Experiences of Objectification During Hospital Care
Understanding the meaning of loss for racialized immigrant fathers and addressing their experiences in a culturally competent manner is important in an increasingly ethnoculturally diverse country like Canada. Culture, customs and rituals influence fathers' grief and culture impacts how individuals discuss death and dying as well as how they perceive the death of a child. This article is part of a qualitative research project, which examined the …
The role of cannabis in pain management among people living with HIV who use drugs: A qualitative study
“I'm not your reality show: ” Perspectives of bereaved mothers' engagement with the news media to advance drug policy reform
North America's overdose crisis is one of the most urgent public health issues of our time and parents bereaved from substance use are a prominent voice within the news media. To date, however, the experiences of bereaved mothers who have shared their stories with the media has not been well-documented, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of their political advocacy efforts. In 2017, we conducted qualitative interviews with 43 mothers …
Bereaved mothers’ engagement in drug policy reform: A multisite qualitative analysis
To date, efforts to address the drug poisoning epidemic have done little to curb casualties. Mothers whose child's death is related to substance use are one group who are bringing their experiences to advocacy efforts aimed at generating new solutions, including calls for decriminalization and legal regulation of drugs. This and other lived experience perspectives represent a critical voice in decision-making and hold the potential to inform more…
It's a Bit of a Double-Edged Sword: Motivation and Personal Impact of Bereaved Mothers' Advocacy for Drug Policy Reform
North America's overdose crisis is an urgent public health issue that has resulted in thousands of deaths. As the crisis began to take hold across Canada in 2016, bereaved parents, mainly mothers, emerged as vocal advocates for drug policy reform and harm reduction, using their stories to challenge the stigma of drug-related death. In 2017, we launched a qualitative research partnership with leading family organizations in Canada, conducting inte…
The emergence of innovative cannabis distribution projects in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, Canada
More than a buzzword: How intersectionality can advance social inequalities in health research
Intersectionality is increasingly adopted in research to understand the complex ways that social inequalities shape health. Intersectional research thus explores how multiple forms of oppression intersect and shape how marginalised social groups experience health issues. Yet intersectionality research has often neglected to focus on the upstream structural factors that (re)produce social inequalities in health. In this paper, we argue that inters…
Parents are the best prevention’? Troubling assumptions in cannabis policy and prevention discourses in the context of legalization in Canada
It's not my business: Exploring heteronormativity in young people's discourses about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues and their implications for youth health and wellbeing
In Canada, the issue of creating safe and inclusive school environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students has been in the spotlight. Several researchers and advocates have pointed out the positive effects of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-positive policy frameworks on the health and wellbeing of all young people. In this article, we take a critical approach to analyzing narrative findings from qualitative…
A Guide to Multisite Qualitative Analysis
The aims of multisite qualitative research, originally developed within the case study tradition, are to produce findings that are reflective of context, while also holding broader applicability across settings. Such knowledge is ideal for informing health and social interventions by overcoming the limitations of research developed through methodological approaches that either "strip" context, or that hold relevance for a site-specific group or p…
Understanding Adolescent Narratives About 'Bullying' Through an Intersectional Lens: Implications for Youth Mental Health Interventions
This article is based on findings from a qualitative study with 27 adolescents in northern British Columbia, Canada. Our aim was to explore youths' perspectives on the sources of emotional distress in their lives and how these are connected to peer-based aggression and victimization within their community. Our analysis of narrative findings suggests that youths' narratives about bullying reflect intersecting and socially embedded configurations o…
Becoming a 'real' smoker: Cultural Capital in Young Women's Accounts of Smoking and Other Substance Use
This paper draws from a qualitative study of tobacco use by young women in Toronto, Canada. Narrative interviews were used to understand the multiple roles and functions of smoking within the everyday lives of female adolescents. Guided by a Bourdieusian theoretical framework this study employed the core construct of cultural capital in order to position tobacco and other substance use as field-specific capital that young women accumulate while n…
"I couldn't say, I'm not a girl" - Adolescents talk about gender and marijuana use
Creating the socially marginalised youth smoker: The Role of Tobacco Control
We discuss how the tobacco control discourse on youth smoking in Canada appears to be producing and constituting socially marginalised smokers. We analyse material from a study on social inequalities in Canadian youth smoking. Individual interviews were conducted in 2007 and 2008 with tobacco control practitioners specialising in youth smoking prevention in British Columbia and Quebec. We found that the discourse on youth smoking is creating a se…
A Guide to Multisite Qualitative Analysis
The aims of multisite qualitative research, originally developed within the case study tradition, are to produce findings that are reflective of context, while also holding broader applicability across settings. Such knowledge is ideal for informing health and social interventions by overcoming the limitations of research developed through methodological approaches that either "strip" context, or that hold relevance for a site-specific group or p…
Breast Cancer Messaging for Younger Women: Gender, Femininity, and Risk
Evidence linking both active smoking and secondhand smoke exposure to premenopausal breast cancer makes the development of health messages specific to younger women a pressing priority. To determine how to communicate information about this modifiable breast cancer risk to young women, we analyzed a selection of 32 recent English-language breast cancer messages and campaigns that targeted young women. In addition, we obtained young women's respon…
It is just not part of the culture here”: Young adults' photo-narratives about smoking, quitting, and healthy lifestyles in Vancouver, Canada
In this article we consider young adults' photo-narratives about smoking and quitting and their linkages to themes of healthy lifestyles and the culture of place in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing from a pilot study using participant-driven photography with a group of twelve young women and men ages nineteen to twenty-six, participants' visual and narrative representations of being a smoker and the process of quitting smoking were analyzed. Findings s…
After the Smoke Has Cleared: Reflections from a Former Smoker and Tobacco Researcher
I grew up in a home where both parents smoked and I had my first cigarette at about age 13. I became a regular smoker sometime in my late teens, and at age 27 began working towards a doctoral degree in public health sciences on the topic of young women and smoking. As an active smoker entering into academic tobacco research circles, I felt very much like a stigmatized outsider and the antismoking sentiments of tobacco researchers and health advoc…
Flawed reports can harm: The case of supervised consumption services in Alberta
Supervised consumption services have been scaled up within Canada and internationally as an ethical imperative in the context of a public health emergency. A large body of peer-reviewed evidence demonstrates that these services prevent poisoning deaths, reduce infectious disease transmission risk behaviour, and facilitate clients' connections to other health and social services. In 2019, the Alberta government commissioned a review of the socioec…
Understanding Adolescent Narratives About 'Bullying' Through an Intersectional Lens: Implications for Youth Mental Health Interventions
This article is based on findings from a qualitative study with 27 adolescents in northern British Columbia, Canada. Our aim was to explore youths' perspectives on the sources of emotional distress in their lives and how these are connected to peer-based aggression and victimization within their community. Our analysis of narrative findings suggests that youths' narratives about bullying reflect intersecting and socially embedded configurations o…
Parents’ online discussions about children’s dental caries: A critical content analysis
Our analysis of online discussions provides an opportunity to think critically about ways in which parents engage with public health, in digital contexts. Although some mothers express disconnect when communicating with dental professionals, they are very engaged and concerned with dental health issues for their children. A challenge for dental public health is to find ways to shift perspective towards recognizing that the target population is em…
A computer-assisted approach to filtering large numbers of documents for media analyses
Media analysts are challenged to acquire selections of documents that are representative of their topics of interest. Conventional search and selection processes are often constrained because of an inability to efficiently filter large amounts of potentially relevant documents and thus pose the risk of introducing bias. We describe a computer-assisted approach to increase the probability of identifying all articles relevant to a topic (in this ca…
Beyond the barriers: Marking the place for marijuana use at a Canadian high school
This ethnographic study aimed at developing a richer understanding of how youth, their schools, and the communities in which they are emplaced coincide to generate a set of local social processes that affect marijuana use. We trace the interplay between high school staff and students with regards to marijuana use in the proximity of a local high school and the shifting geographies of use in this setting. Although marijuana use was a concern for t…
A cautionary tale: University institutes of public health must “walk the talk”
Public health is, and has long been, defined as the art and science of promoting health and preventing illness through organized efforts of society.This definition and scope convey certain elements and values, which distinguish public health from other fields of scholarship and practice (CPHA, 2017).These include population-level thinking, a commitment to health equity and its foundations in social justice, and an upstream focus on root causes of…
It's a Bit of a Double-Edged Sword: Motivation and Personal Impact of Bereaved Mothers' Advocacy for Drug Policy Reform
North America's overdose crisis is an urgent public health issue that has resulted in thousands of deaths. As the crisis began to take hold across Canada in 2016, bereaved parents, mainly mothers, emerged as vocal advocates for drug policy reform and harm reduction, using their stories to challenge the stigma of drug-related death. In 2017, we launched a qualitative research partnership with leading family organizations in Canada, conducting inte…
Challenging key assumptions embedded in Health Canada’s cigarette packaging legislation: Findings from in situ interviews with smokers in Vancouver
A Qualitative Content Analysis of Cigarette Health Warning Labels in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States
The legislation of health warning labels on cigarette packaging is a major focus for tobacco control internationally and is a key component of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This population-level intervention is broadly supported as a vital measure for warning people about the health consequences of smoking. However, some components of this approach warrant close critical inspection. Through a qualitative…
The Influences of Health Beliefs and Identity on Adolescent Marijuana and Tobacco Co-Use
Among youth, the co-use of marijuana and tobacco is highly prevalent, yet a considerable gap remains in the drug-prevention literature pertaining to such co-use. In particular, the prevention field lacks research exploring how adolescents understand the health implications of smoking these two substances in combination. In this article, we draw on qualitative interviews with adolescents from three communities in British Columbia, Canada, and desc…
Beyond the barriers: Marking the place for marijuana use at a Canadian high school
This ethnographic study aimed at developing a richer understanding of how youth, their schools, and the communities in which they are emplaced coincide to generate a set of local social processes that affect marijuana use. We trace the interplay between high school staff and students with regards to marijuana use in the proximity of a local high school and the shifting geographies of use in this setting. Although marijuana use was a concern for t…
"I couldn't say, I'm not a girl" - Adolescents talk about gender and marijuana use
Becoming a 'real' smoker: Cultural Capital in Young Women's Accounts of Smoking and Other Substance Use
This paper draws from a qualitative study of tobacco use by young women in Toronto, Canada. Narrative interviews were used to understand the multiple roles and functions of smoking within the everyday lives of female adolescents. Guided by a Bourdieusian theoretical framework this study employed the core construct of cultural capital in order to position tobacco and other substance use as field-specific capital that young women accumulate while n…
I’m a young student, I’m a girl … and for some reason they are hard on me for smoking: The role of gender and social context for smoking behaviour
Despite considerable population declines, smoking has become increasingly socially stratified, a trend that emerges as salient when examining smoking according to gender. However, there is a dearth of comparative research with regard to smoking inequalities among men and women. The goal of this exploratory study was to examine how three elements of the social context (identity, body, agency) are gendered and the way in which they differentially s…
The missing picture’: Tobacco use through the eyes of smokers
Photographic methods have the potential to generate information that may assist in developing tobacco control messaging and programming that speaks to smokers' perceptions of their tobacco use
Breast Cancer Messaging for Younger Women: Gender, Femininity, and Risk
Evidence linking both active smoking and secondhand smoke exposure to premenopausal breast cancer makes the development of health messages specific to younger women a pressing priority. To determine how to communicate information about this modifiable breast cancer risk to young women, we analyzed a selection of 32 recent English-language breast cancer messages and campaigns that targeted young women. In addition, we obtained young women's respon…
A computer-assisted approach to filtering large numbers of documents for media analyses
Media analysts are challenged to acquire selections of documents that are representative of their topics of interest. Conventional search and selection processes are often constrained because of an inability to efficiently filter large amounts of potentially relevant documents and thus pose the risk of introducing bias. We describe a computer-assisted approach to increase the probability of identifying all articles relevant to a topic (in this ca…
Creating the socially marginalised youth smoker: The Role of Tobacco Control
We discuss how the tobacco control discourse on youth smoking in Canada appears to be producing and constituting socially marginalised smokers. We analyse material from a study on social inequalities in Canadian youth smoking. Individual interviews were conducted in 2007 and 2008 with tobacco control practitioners specialising in youth smoking prevention in British Columbia and Quebec. We found that the discourse on youth smoking is creating a se…
The privileged normalization of marijuana use – an analysis of Canadian newspaper reporting, 1997–2007
The objective of this study was to systematically examine predominant themes within mainstream media reporting about marijuana use in Canada. To ascertain the themes present in major Canadian newspaper reports, a sample ( N = 1999) of articles published between 1997 and 2007 was analyzed. Drawing from Manning's theory of the symbolic framing of drug use within media, it is argued that a discourse of 'privileged normalization' informs portrayals o…
It is just not part of the culture here”: Young adults' photo-narratives about smoking, quitting, and healthy lifestyles in Vancouver, Canada
In this article we consider young adults' photo-narratives about smoking and quitting and their linkages to themes of healthy lifestyles and the culture of place in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing from a pilot study using participant-driven photography with a group of twelve young women and men ages nineteen to twenty-six, participants' visual and narrative representations of being a smoker and the process of quitting smoking were analyzed. Findings s…
After the Smoke Has Cleared: Reflections from a Former Smoker and Tobacco Researcher
I grew up in a home where both parents smoked and I had my first cigarette at about age 13. I became a regular smoker sometime in my late teens, and at age 27 began working towards a doctoral degree in public health sciences on the topic of young women and smoking. As an active smoker entering into academic tobacco research circles, I felt very much like a stigmatized outsider and the antismoking sentiments of tobacco researchers and health advoc…
The Influences of Health Beliefs and Identity on Adolescent Marijuana and Tobacco Co-Use
Among youth, the co-use of marijuana and tobacco is highly prevalent, yet a considerable gap remains in the drug-prevention literature pertaining to such co-use. In particular, the prevention field lacks research exploring how adolescents understand the health implications of smoking these two substances in combination. In this article, we draw on qualitative interviews with adolescents from three communities in British Columbia, Canada, and desc…
A Qualitative Content Analysis of Cigarette Health Warning Labels in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States
The legislation of health warning labels on cigarette packaging is a major focus for tobacco control internationally and is a key component of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This population-level intervention is broadly supported as a vital measure for warning people about the health consequences of smoking. However, some components of this approach warrant close critical inspection. Through a qualitative…
Challenging key assumptions embedded in Health Canada’s cigarette packaging legislation: Findings from in situ interviews with smokers in Vancouver
Parents’ online discussions about children’s dental caries: A critical content analysis
Our analysis of online discussions provides an opportunity to think critically about ways in which parents engage with public health, in digital contexts. Although some mothers express disconnect when communicating with dental professionals, they are very engaged and concerned with dental health issues for their children. A challenge for dental public health is to find ways to shift perspective towards recognizing that the target population is em…
A Guide to Multisite Qualitative Analysis
The aims of multisite qualitative research, originally developed within the case study tradition, are to produce findings that are reflective of context, while also holding broader applicability across settings. Such knowledge is ideal for informing health and social interventions by overcoming the limitations of research developed through methodological approaches that either "strip" context, or that hold relevance for a site-specific group or p…
Understanding Adolescent Narratives About 'Bullying' Through an Intersectional Lens: Implications for Youth Mental Health Interventions
This article is based on findings from a qualitative study with 27 adolescents in northern British Columbia, Canada. Our aim was to explore youths' perspectives on the sources of emotional distress in their lives and how these are connected to peer-based aggression and victimization within their community. Our analysis of narrative findings suggests that youths' narratives about bullying reflect intersecting and socially embedded configurations o…
More than a buzzword: How intersectionality can advance social inequalities in health research
Intersectionality is increasingly adopted in research to understand the complex ways that social inequalities shape health. Intersectional research thus explores how multiple forms of oppression intersect and shape how marginalised social groups experience health issues. Yet intersectionality research has often neglected to focus on the upstream structural factors that (re)produce social inequalities in health. In this paper, we argue that inters…
Parents are the best prevention’? Troubling assumptions in cannabis policy and prevention discourses in the context of legalization in Canada
It's not my business: Exploring heteronormativity in young people's discourses about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues and their implications for youth health and wellbeing
In Canada, the issue of creating safe and inclusive school environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students has been in the spotlight. Several researchers and advocates have pointed out the positive effects of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-positive policy frameworks on the health and wellbeing of all young people. In this article, we take a critical approach to analyzing narrative findings from qualitative…
The emergence of innovative cannabis distribution projects in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, Canada
The role of cannabis in pain management among people living with HIV who use drugs: A qualitative study
“I'm not your reality show: ” Perspectives of bereaved mothers' engagement with the news media to advance drug policy reform
North America's overdose crisis is one of the most urgent public health issues of our time and parents bereaved from substance use are a prominent voice within the news media. To date, however, the experiences of bereaved mothers who have shared their stories with the media has not been well-documented, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of their political advocacy efforts. In 2017, we conducted qualitative interviews with 43 mothers …
Bereaved mothers’ engagement in drug policy reform: A multisite qualitative analysis
To date, efforts to address the drug poisoning epidemic have done little to curb casualties. Mothers whose child's death is related to substance use are one group who are bringing their experiences to advocacy efforts aimed at generating new solutions, including calls for decriminalization and legal regulation of drugs. This and other lived experience perspectives represent a critical voice in decision-making and hold the potential to inform more…
It's a Bit of a Double-Edged Sword: Motivation and Personal Impact of Bereaved Mothers' Advocacy for Drug Policy Reform
North America's overdose crisis is an urgent public health issue that has resulted in thousands of deaths. As the crisis began to take hold across Canada in 2016, bereaved parents, mainly mothers, emerged as vocal advocates for drug policy reform and harm reduction, using their stories to challenge the stigma of drug-related death. In 2017, we launched a qualitative research partnership with leading family organizations in Canada, conducting inte…
Sociology (34 works) · Psychology (30 works) · Medicine (27 works) · Political science (24 works) · Psychiatry (18 works) · Public health (18 works) · Nursing (17 works) · Social science (17 works) · Qualitative research (15 works) · Social Psychology (12 works)