News

Dr Elaine Toomey and Dr David Mothersill from the School of Psychology at NUI Galway, have both received prestigious awards for their specific areas of research from the Irish Canadian University Foundation and the Royal Irish Academy. Elaine received the ‘Irish Canadian University Foundation James M Flaherty Early Career Researcher Award’ to conduct further research on the adaptation of ‘Football Fans in Training’ (FFIT), an effective health behaviour change intervention that used Scottish professional football clubs to engage with overweight and obese men. The ‘Hockey Fit’ intervention was recently developed by Dr Rob Petrella and Dr Dawn Gill in Western University, Ontario to adapt the FFIT project to ice-hockey, within a Canadian context. Elaine's award will enable her to visit Western University and explore the Canadian ‘Hockey Fit’ intervention with a specific focus on how FFIT components were adapted to suit a different sporting and cultural context, and inform how this might be used in an Irish context. Elaine will also spend time in the Centre for Implementation Research in the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute to maximise how knowledge from her visit to Western University can be used to inform adaptation and translation into an Irish setting, using a structured and theory-based approach. Well done Elaine, have a great trip! Read the FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE