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Taking place on October 16 each year, World Spine Day highlights the importance of spinal health and well-being, as well as recognizing the burden of spinal pain and disability around the world. KPE’s Olivia Pastore, 3^rd year PhD Candidate in the Theories and Interventions in Exercise and Health Psychology (TIE) laboratory, says that this day is important to recognize as an estimated one billion people worldwide suffer from spinal pain. Olivia’s PhD research is centered around spinal cord injury (SCI), where she specifically aims to understand and reduce compassion fatigue among SCI mentors in community-based SCI organizations.

Olivia explains that ‘In Canada, there are nine provincial community-based SCI organizations that offer peer mentorship programs.’ Peer mentors are people living with SCIs where their role is to help other individuals with SCIs adapt to their new realities and thrive in life. Olivia continues ‘peer mentors are critical to these SCI organizations; however, these organizations are reporting that mentors are stepping down from their roles as a result of emotional and psychological toll, or in other words, compassion fatigue.’ To help mitigate the effects of compassion fatigue in this group, she is currently co-developing a self-compassion program with SCI British Columbia and SCI Ontario. The goal of this program is to equip SCI mentors with the psychological skills and resilience to manage difficult situations within mentorship.

Olivia says that spreading awareness about World Spinal Day and spinal health and disability is an important step in the research process. ‘One approach that I used is Integrated Knowledge Translation, which allows for meaningful engagement with community partners and end-users at every step of the research process to ensure that the research being conducted is meaningful and addresses important community needs.’

In addition, infographics and brief videos outlining research findings are sent directly to SCI organizations and published to the TIE lab website.

To find out more about Olivia’s research and SCI peer mentorship programs, visit the UUÖ±²¥ SCI peer mentorship website.Ìý