Before she moved west in the fall of 2014, Jasmine Brown spent long work days on Parliament Hill, toiling alongside the two most powerful political leaders in Canada.
As Special Assistant to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Principal Secretary and Policy Advisor to late federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Brown was fully immersed in the daily cut-and-thrust of national politics.
"In working for (Harper and Flaherty) I was able to directly witness and actively participate in the development of Canadian history," says Brown, who holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Calgary.
"We worked long days, for months and years on end, under pretty unforgiving, fast-paced conditions. But getting to work at that level under the leadership of two outstanding, very unique individuals was a complete privilege and honour."
When Brown left Ottawa to accept a post with the Institute of Health Economics (IHE) in Edmonton, she assumed it would be a less pressure-packed life. One that allowed her to catch a regular night's sleep, for example.
Alas, it wasn't meant to be.
These days, Brown lives an equally frenetic existence, shuttling between her home in Victoria and an apartment in Edmonton, while juggling her full-time job as Director of Communications at IHE and pursuing a Graduate Degree in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alberta.
"I thought that time in my life (in Ottawa) would be the most sleep-deprived I would ever be," she jokes. "I was corrected when I started graduate studies while working full-time. But both experiences have fed my mind and soul in a way that makes me happier and more fulfilled."
While in Ottawa, Brown advised Flaherty on critical files including natural resources, environment and international trade. In terms of subject matter, the focus of her graduate research is a 180-degree turn.
It involves harnessing innovative digital technologies to help pregnant women with addictions issues measure and manage their alcohol consumption, helping them reduce the risk that their babies might develop FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder).
"FASD is caused by the consumption of alcohol while a woman is pregnant. It's a medical term to describe a range of physical and mental problems that can occur, some more severe than others," says Brown.
"In Canada there are approximately 300,000 people living with FASD, and in Alberta it's about 46,000, based on the last set of numbers I've seen. Put differently, an estimated nine of every 1,000 babies in Canada are born with FASD annually."
FAS, or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, is the most severe form of FASD. It often leads to facial deformities, reduced birth weights and a smaller head circumference, among other things.
Less severe forms of FASD include pFAS (Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome), which is associated with some but not all of the physiological symptoms associated with FAS; ARND (Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder), which is linked to intellectual disabilities and damage to the central nervous system; and ARBD (Alcohol-Related Birth Defects), which presents with physical defects such as malformations of the heart, bone, kidney, vision and/or hearing systems.
"With our study, we set out to look at ways that prevention interventions might support the maternal health of women with histories of alcohol abuse. That is, help a pregnant woman abstain from drinking, or reduce the level of alcohol consumption during pregnancy," Brown explains.
"The women we enrolled were quite vulnerable. They were women who admitted to having a history of problems with alcohol, specifically. To recruit them, we blanketed the city with posters with our phone number on it, and we did a lot of presentations to different groups," she says. "But we found the most effective way to reach potential participants was through word of mouth."
After the study was funded in April 2015, a year-long recruitment drive began in March 2016, and was completed by March 2017. By August of 2017 the last of the 19 study participants had given birth. Collection of all related study data was completed last month.
Aside from Brown, the other members of her study team included Enrollment Coordinator Nicole Riley, an IHE staffer and Bachelor of Arts (Economics and Psychology) student at the University of Alberta; Dr. Egon Jonsson, former CEO of IHE and Adjunct Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Psychiatry; and Principle Investigator Dr. Andrew Greenshaw, Associate Chair-Research, Department of Psychiatry.
Three times each day, study participants were asked to blow into a mobile alcohol-measuring breathalyzer device that incorporated specialized facial recognition technology, developed by a U.S. firm called Soberlink. The technology was used to confirm participants' identities.
"The hope was that by monitoring their own sobriety it would help them maintain that sobriety and be more aware of it. We wanted to know if that form of self-monitoring would help change their behavior around drinking," Brown explains.
And what were the findings? For that, we'll have to wait a bit longer.
"We haven't released them yet," says Brown. "But we found there were some really interesting unintended benefits to the intervention that we might actually base future studies on. We hope to release our findings in a peer-reviewed publication in the spring or summer of 2018."
Specific study outcomes aside, Brown is convinced that preventive health care measures are the way to go.
"Whether you look at it from a quality-of-life perspective or a cost reduction perspective, preventive health care is really important. The Institute of Health Economics did a study showing the short-term costs of FASD are between $48 million and $143 million per year," she says.
"That includes incremental medical costs, education costs, social service costs, direct costs to the patient's family, productivity losses and behavior-related issues. Those are all additional costs to the Albertan economy, and that doesn't include costs to the judicial system."
As if she doesn't have enough on her plate already, Brown recently agreed to serve as manager of the provincial evaluation process for Alberta's recently launched supervised drug consumption sites.
In October, Health Canada approved four supervised drug consumption sites in Edmonton, one site in Calgary and another site in Lethbridge. Three of the Edmonton sites will be located in the downtown core and operated by Access to Medically Supervised Injection Services Edmonton (AMSISE). Alberta Health Services (AHS) will operate a fourth local site at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, starting this spring.
"These are sites that allow people to use drugs under the supervision of health care professionals, so if someone has an overdose they can respond immediately," says Brown.
"The province contracted the Institute of Health Economics to run an Alberta-wide evaluation of all of the sites. There are a couple of them now in operation so we're working closely with them to create this provincial evaluation."
And what is Brown's ultimate career goal? For that, she has a ready answer.
"My dream is to work on prevention interventions with the World Health Organization. I'd love to work on implementation-related projects for prevention intervention. That would be my dream job, just to go and try to help populations be healthier and stay healthier."