Catalyst Seminar Series - March 2026

Join us for Catalyst Series, a dynamic seminar series showcasing groundbreaking research funded by the Institute of Health Emergencies and Pandemics' (IHEP) Catalyst and Research Development Grants. Since 2023, IHEP has provided over $1 million to research teams at the University of Toronto, to support collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects. These presentations spotlight the innovative work of interdisciplinary teams tackling urgent challenges in pandemic preparedness, response, and recovery.

From data-driven public health strategies to community-based interventions and novel biomedical approaches, each session will feature compelling insights from researchers whose projects are shaping the future of public health resilience.

What to Expect

• Engaging presentations from Phase 1 and Phase 2 Catalyst Grant recipients
• Opportunities to connect with leading experts across disciplines
• Discussions on real-world impact and future directions

Projects Highlighted

Empowering Recovery: Enhancing health literacy and social networks for black gay, bisexual, MSM (BGBM) in Ontario

• Presenter: Lance T. McCready (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education)
• This research project, led by Dr. Lance McCready and Dr. Notisha Massaquoi in collaboration with the Black Gay Men’s Network of Ontario (BGMN), enhances pandemic resilience and recovery among Black gay, bisexual, MSM (BGBM) in Ontario by focusing on two critical areas: health literacy and social networks. The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted two spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and additional people who identify as part of sexual and gender diverse communities (2SLGBTQIA+), specifically BGBM exacerbating long-standing health disparities, particularly related to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), while straining existing support systems. Building on BGMN’s successful virtual programming developed during the pandemic, this project repurposes this content and develops new content and events using a popular education framework to improve BGBM health literacy and foster social connections. The project uses a community-based participatory research approach that involves community members in all stages of the research, ensuring that the interventions are culturally relevant and responsive to the needs of BGBM in Ontario. This project generates evidence on how enhanced health literacy and strengthened social support networks can contribute to pandemic recovery and readiness. The outcomes of this research provide actionable strategies for reducing health disparities and improving access to care, ensuring that BGBM are better equipped to navigate future health crises. This project not only addresses immediate recovery needs but also contributes to the long-term resilience of a historically marginalized community, offering insights that can inform broader public health initiatives.

Improving resilience to misinformation to facilitate effective communication with the public

• Presenter: Li Shu (Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering)
• To facilitate effective public-health communication, we explored ways to increase public resilience to misinformation. We aimed to address 1) confirmation bias when people consume information, 2) misinformation that has taken hold in individuals, and 3) social conformity to behave in ways inconsistent with accurate information. This presentation will focus more on 1), and include results as available for 2) and 3).
• Individuals are subject to confirmation bias when they assimilate information. For example, those who do not (want to) believe that a disease is harmful will seek and preferentially attend to information that minimizes harm. We examined whether prompting self-reflection on past confirmation bias, followed by brief debiasing training, could reduce biased online-information selection, and shift COVID-19 risk perceptions. We also explored how individual cognitive differences affect information selection and risk perception. The self-reflection intervention did not lead to significant changes in risk perception compared to the control condition. However, risk perception for all participants significantly increased after an information-selection task. These results suggest that limited information exposure, rather than confirmation bias alone, played a critical role in shaping participants' risk perception. Analyses of results also highlight the need for more cognitively aligned public-health messaging, particularly in contexts with evolving health information.