30/09/2025
Ottawa, Ontario — Tuesday September 30, 2025
At the intersection of community, culture, and care, new CHEO Research Institute Scientist Dr. Carolyn Melro is re-imagining Indigenous child health systems.
Joining the CHEO Research Institute in July 2025, Dr. Melro’s work is rooted in collaboration with Indigenous communities, emotionally resonant learning, and culturally grounded care.
“Truth and Reconciliation is not a single day – it’s a lifelong commitment to listening, learning, and transforming how we care for Indigenous children, youth, and families. Through my research program at CHEO, I’m honoured to walk alongside communities to co-create health systems that reflect Indigenous knowledge, cultural strength, and leadership,” said Dr. Melro, who is also an Assistant Professor (in progress) at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa.
Exploring the empowerment of Indigenous youth to co-design mental health and systems change, Dr. Melro helps build trust in Indigenous research partnerships, and educating health professionals on the effects of historical and ongoing colonialism. Eloquently shared as the metaphor of basket weaving in her paper, Engaging Indigenous partners in health service transformation: a framework for sustained engagement built on trust in the journal of Research Involvement and Engagement.
She creates space for Indigenous ways of knowing to shape both learning and healing. This approach challenges conventional models of health research and education, exploring how health professions education can shift from knowledge-based outcomes to deeper transformations in belief systems and intergroup attitudes.
Dr. Melro’s contributions to Indigenous health research reach the national level, where she is involved in several projects driving research to improve mental health services for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis youth across Canada. She serves as an advisor to the $10.8 million ACCESS Open Minds Indigenous Youth Mental Health and Wellness Network along with Dr. Nancy Young, Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute, to build capacity for culturally relevant care by developing a digital repository of Indigenous mental health tools and supporting health services in integrating traditional knowledge into learning health systems. This philosophy is captured in her paper, Integrating Indigenous Ways of Knowing Into Learning Health Systems: Moving From Learning Health Systems to Learning Communities, soon to be published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, which reimagines health systems as spaces of shared learning where community wisdom helps to guide innovation.
In the spirit of Truth and Reconciliation, the CHEO Research Institute continues to expand its focus on Indigenous health research, particularly in the area of mental health, as demonstrated through projects such as the Aaniish Naa Gegii: the Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM) , which received the received the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) Assessed Badge, marking a significant milestone in digital mental health.