Dr. Colantonio holds a Canada Research Chair in Traumatic Brain Injury in Underserved Populations, focusing on advancing equitable care for individuals affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI). Through a gender-based and equity-informed approach, her program collaborates with organizations and individuals with lived experience, specifically individuals experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV), involvement in the criminal-legal system, and housing instability, to ensure that screening strategies are more accessible, relevant and responsive to diverse needs influenced by social determinants of health.
Epidemiology and Long-term Outcomes of TBI: Dr. Colantonio's research has been instrumental in understanding the chronic nature of TBI, including functional limitations and increased risk of chronic conditions. She led one of the largest longitudinal studies in TBI, with follow-up periods of up to 24 years, identifying important gender differences in symptom reporting and daily functioning. More recently, her team demonstrated an elevated risk of dementia, especially among women, based on a longitudinal analyses of over 700,000 individuals with TBI and spinal cord injury using sex-specific models.
Sex, Gender, and TBI: She led the first comprehensive multi-site study examining the long-term effects of TBI on female reproductive health, including menstrual disruption and pregnancy outcomes up to 10 years post-injury. This work expanded into a broader research program integrating sex- and gender-based analysis, including her CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health. She is currently leading a comprehensive review on how female reproductive health is impacted by TBI to create an educational resource for acute and chronic recovery. Her team has also developed and evaluated educational resources for clinicians, persons with TBI and their caregiver to understand the impact of biological sex and sociocultural gender on TBI recovery. Further work includes an ongoing clinical trial examining sex-related differences in response to oculomotor rehabilitation, using virtual reality, to evaluate its effectiveness for concussion-related visual symptoms.
Big Data and Health Systems Research: Dr. Colantonio led the development and implementation of the world's first population-based ABI Dataset across the continuum of care using her team's unique population-based health care data from the Canadian publicly funded health care system. She led a study examining TBI care contexts not previously explored at a population-based level, such as TBI in complex continuing care and inpatient mental health facilities, providing critical epidemiological and health service utilization data to stakeholders across geographic areas. Her team has also involved more data mining approaches and more explicit consideration to sex differences in comorbidities, such as neck injuries. Recently, her team is working on investigating sex-stratified patterns in depression-related service utilization following TBI.
TBI in vulnerable populations and intimate partner violence: A major focus of her research is the overrepresentation of TBI among vulnerable populations. With an extensive network of community partners, and with funding from the Department of Justice Canada, Dr. Colantonio's team developed the first TBI-IPV toolkit, using an integrated knowledge translation (iKT) approach. This work has attracted the interest of Indigenous communities in Canada, leading to a collaborative research project that was published in a special issue of Brain Impairment in collaboration with the Pauktuutit Inuit Women. Currently, through a large Public Health Agency of Canada-funded project, Dr. Colantonio is advancing this work by improving knowledge of IPV-related brain injury through the development of evidence-based resources and a centralized, collaborative platform for survivors, service providers, and the public.
- CIHR Research Chair in Gender, Work and Health
- Professor, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto
- Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
- Faculty, Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, University of Toronto
- Faculty Member, Collaborative Program in Neuroscience (CPIN), University of Toronto
- Senior Adjunct Scientist, ICES
- Associate Member, Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery