The iCARE Study Executive Committee, along with the iCARE Study’s three sponsoring organisations, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 iCARE Summer Scholarship Awards.
The purpose of this scholarship is to facilitate international collaboration and mentorship of trainees working on iCARE study data. The selected mentorship collaboration will conduct a specific research project that exploits available iCARE study data. Winners are each awarded CAD$4,000 to offset costs of travel and collaborative activities that contribute to the building of a mentor partnership.
The quality of the 2025 applications was excellent, and applicants included individuals at various career stages including undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars. Furthermore, the applicants came from 5 different countries, highlighting the international reach of the award.
Andres Felipe Puerta
- Home institution: EAFIT University, Colombia
- Mentor/iCARE collaborator: Mariantonia Lemos
- Project title: Trust in information sources on COVID-19 in Colombia: comparative analysis between ICARE and Twitter
Project Outline: Trust in information sources was an influential factor for protective behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Colombia. This project seeks to compare the trust reported by Colombians regarding sources of information about COVID-19 in the period between 31 March and 18 August in Colombia, using data from the iCARE study and publications on the social network X (Twitter). A thematic classification, entity extraction and sentiment analysis are carried out, which allows us to contrast perceptions, most cited sources and emotional valence with the levels of trust and behavior reported in the iCARE survey. The study seeks to provide evidence to understand the differences and coincidences between the public discourse through social networks and the perception declared in the survey, to improve risk communication strategies and the design of public health policies. View the project’s data analysis plan
Anna Yayloyan
Home institution: Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Mentor/iCARE collaborator: Angelos Kassianos
Project title: Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Pregnant Women: Evidence from the iCARE Study
Project Outline: This project will contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors that shape vaccine hesitancy during pregnancy by analyzing patterns within the iCARE survey data from Italy, France, Ireland, and Canada—countries selected to allow cross-national comparison across different public health environments. The findings are expected to inform the development of targeted public health interventions that address the behavioral drivers influencing vaccination decisions during pregnancy. Specifically, this study aims to: (a) characterize the prevalence and patterns of vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women in the selected countries; and (b) examine the associations between vaccine hesitancy and sociodemographic, behavioral, and health-related factors. View the project’s data analysis plan
Fionnuala Braun
Home institutions: University of Saskatchewan and Carleton University, Canada
Mentor/iCARE collaborator: Nazeem Muhajarine
Project title: Non-Traditional News as a Source of COVID-19 Vaccination Information in Canada: A Convergent Parallel Analysis
Project Outline: This project aims to integrate data from CoVaRR-Net’s qualitative study on trust during the pandemic with iCare data investigating social media use during the early stages of vaccine rollout. In so doing, it would directly contribute to a wholistic, integrative approach to understanding how Canadians’ trust in and use of social media affected their decision to accept COVID-19 vaccines, drawing on significant sample sizes and thus further expanding the academic discourse surrounding vaccine hesitancy. In the proposed study, I will employ a convergent parallel mixed methods approach to compare and contrast participants’ responses in the qualitative data collected in the qualitative interviews I designed, implemented, and analyzed for CoVaRR-Net with the quantitative responses collected from participants in iCare’s Canadian Longitudinal Surveys 9-11, as these surveys were conducted during the period when vaccines were first being rolled out. View the project’s data analysis plan
Florence Coulombe Raymond
Home institution: Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
Mentor/iCARE collaborator: Kim Lavoie
Project title: Attitudes of Canadians towards COVID-19 prevention measures according to vaccination status
Project Outline: As part of the International COVID-19 Awareness and Responses Evaluation (iCARE) Study, the proposed project seeks to investigate how COVID-19 vaccination status influences adherence to other preventive health behaviors among Canadian adults. iCARE is a multi-phase global observational initiative led by the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre and supported by over 200 international researchers. It collects self-reported data from participants in over 150 countries via online surveys, available in 44 languages, with the goal of understanding public responses to evolving health policies during the pandemic. This study will focus on a nationally representative Canadian sample (N = 18,032) collected across six survey waves between March 2021 and June 2022 through the polling firm Léger. The project was developed in response to emerging evidence of rising COVID-19 cases following widespread vaccine distribution, which raised important questions about potential shifts in public engagement with other preventive measures. Understanding whether vaccination influences behaviors such as mask-wearing, handwashing, social distancing, and self-isolation is critical for informing targeted communication strategies and optimizing pandemic response planning. View the project’s data analysis plan
