Dr. Rod McCormickProfessor and Research Chair | Faculty of Education &
Social Work
Email: rmccormick@tru.ca
Phone: 250-299-5052
Interests
I am an Indigenous health researcher. My Nation is Kanienkehaka (Mohawk). I live on Reserve in my partners home community of Tkemlups te Secwepemc.
Research Interests
Although my research chair is technically named Indigenous child and maternal health and education my
broad area of research is in Indigenous health. Most of my professional training and experience is in
Counselling Psychology and in Indigenous mental health. For the past 15 years I have been engaged in
Indigenous health research capacity building and in Indigenous health research advocacy at the
provincial and national level. For over 10 years I ran the BC Aboriginal Capacity and Developmental
Research Environments (ACADRE), the Network Environment for Aboriginal Health Research (NEAHRBCYT), and
Kloshe Tillicum. On the advocacy front I am the co-founder/leader of the National Aboriginal Health
Research Steering Committee: Kawatsire. At present I am developing a new centre at TRU called: All my
Relations. This centre will be a national Indigenous family and community health research and training
centre to identify, research and further develop and implement best practices in Aboriginal family and
community health and healing.
Research Funding
The majority of my research funding has come from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
($29,331,929). I have been a either a PI, Co-PI or Co-I on the following competitive CIHR funded
research grants
1. Indigenous Mentorship Program in Traditional medicine
2. CIHR Network Environments for Aboriginal Health Research
3. Aboriginal Health Research Networks (AHRNets) for Aboriginal Knowledge and Ways of Knowing
4. Network environment for aboriginal health research in BC and the western arctic" (NEAHR-BCWA)
5. Long QT Syndrome in Northern British Columbia: Understanding the impact
6. Resilient indigenous health workforce networks: constructing an international framework
7. Access issues for Aboriginal people seeking primary care services in an urban centre
8. Building community support for aboriginal youth: Prevention of youth suicide attempt and personal
injury
9. The Cedar Project: Exploring vulnerabilities to HIV, HCV, and STIs among young Aboriginal people who
use drugs in urban and rural settings
10. Honouring Our Strengths: Indigenous Culture as Intervention in Addictions Treatment
11. Injury in British Columbia's aboriginal communities: Building capacity while developing
knowledge
12. Understanding and acting on Aboriginal suicide: A new multidisciplinary research team
13. Making Quality Count: Developing Primary Health Care Research Networks to Reduce Disparaties for
Vulnerable Populations
14. An exploration of how to develop culturally appropriate health care within the Aboriginal
Nations
15. Using Land-based Stewardship to Improve Health and Wellness among Vancouver Urban Aboriginal
Populations
16. National network for aboriginal mental health research
17. Roots of resilience: transformations of identity and community in indigenous mental health
18. B.C. ACADRE: What works? The four R's of Aboriginal health
Education
Ph.D. University of British Columbia-Counselling Psychology 1994
M.A. University of Victoria-Counselling Psychology 1986
B.Ed. Queens University 1981
B.A. Carleton University 1980
Publications
Publications-last 5 years only
Journal articles
Jin, A., George, M. A., Brussoni, M., Lalonde, C., & McCormick, R. (2015). Primary care visits due
to injuries among the Aboriginal off-reserve population of British Columbia, Canada, 1991-2010,
International Journal for Equity in Health The official journal of the International Society for Equity
in Health14:136
George, M. A., Jin, A., Brussoni, M., Lalonde, C., & McCormick, R. (2015). Injury risk in British
Columbia, Canada: Are Aboriginal children and youth over-represented? Injury Epidemiology, 2(1), 7. DOI:
10.1186/s40621-015-0039-2.
Caron, N., Thira, S., Jovel, E., Butler-Walker, J., Lalonde, C., Arbour, L., Vedan, R., Mccormick, R.
(2015) Capacity Interrupted: The Kloshe Tillicum Graduate Student Training Experience. Canadian Journal
of Native Education
Jin, A., Lalonde, C.E., Brussoni, M. McCormick, R. George, A. (2015). Injury hospitalizations due to
unintentional falls among the Aboriginal population of British Columbia, Canada: Incidence, changes over
time, and ecological analysis of risk markers, 1991-2010. PloS One.
Chachamovich, E., Kirmayer, L., Haggarty, J., Cargo, M., McCormick, R., Turecki, (2015) Suicide Among
Inuit: Results From a Large, Epidemiologically Representative Follow-Back Study in Nunavut, Canadian
Journal of Psychiatry. 60(6):268-75.
Scheifele D, Halperin S, Lajeunesse C, Dawar M, McCormick R, Lem M. (2013) Response of Aboriginal
infants to pertussis vaccine components: results of a controlled comparison study. International Journal
of Circumpolar Health 2013, 72:20930.
George,M.A, R McCormick, CE Lalonde, A Jin, Brussono, M., Ishiyama, I. (2013) The RISC research project:
injury in First Nations communities in British Columbia, Canada. International journal of circumpolar
health, 2013:72:21182
McCormick, R. (2012) Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen. Cross Currents. The Journal of Addiction and Mental Health
15(5).
Goodwill, A, McCormick, R. (2012) Giibinenimidizomin: Owning Ourselves Critical Incidents in the
Attainment of Aboriginal Identity. Canadian Journal of Counselling and psychotherapy 46 (1), 21-34.
Book Chapters
McCormick, R., Walton, P., Arnouse, M. (2013) The Child is father of the man. In Working with Aboriginal
Peoples with Mental Health and Addiction Problems : A Guide for Health, Justice and Social Service
Professionals (Eds) P. Menzies and L. Lavall??e, Toronto, Centre for Adiction and Mental Health.
McCormick, R., Thira, S., Arvay, M., Rinaldis, S. (2013) In their own words: A retrospective exploratory
study of how to facilitate healing for suicidal Indigenous youth. In Routledge International Handbook of
Clinical Suicide Research In J R. Cutcliffe, J.Santos, P. Links, J. Zaheer, H. Harder, F. Campbell,
R.McCormick, Y. Bergmans, K. Harder, New York, Routledge ??? 496 pages
Wardman D, McCormick R, McKennit D, O'Donaghy P. (2012) Non-traditional use of tobacco among Aboriginal
Canadians In C. Els, D. Kunyk, P. Selby, (Eds.) Disease Interrupted: Tobacco Reduction and Cessation,
Charleston, NC: CreateSpace.
Books
Cutcliffe, J.R., Santos, J., Links, P. S., Zaheer, J., Harder, H., Campbell, F., McCormick, R.,
Bergmans, Y., Harder, K. (2013). Routledge International Handbook of Clinical Suicide Research (496
pages).
McCormick, R., Amundson, N., & Poehnell, G. (2002), Guiding Circles: career Exploration for
Aboriginal people (38 pages) Aboriginal Human Resources Development Council
McCormick, R., Amundson, N., & Poehnell, G. (2006), Guiding Circles: An Aboriginal Guide to finding
Career paths Booklet 2: Finding New Possibilities (38 pages) Aboriginal Human Resources Development
Council of Canada
Conference Presentations
I have been a presenter or keynote presenter at over 100 national and international scholarly
conferences.
Employment History
1994-2013 Lecturer/Assistant/Associate Professor at UBC
2013-present Professor and BCIC Research Chair at TRU
Courses Taught
At UBC I largely taught clinical counselling courses as well as group counselling, career counselling
and cross cultural counselling.
At TRU I have taught advanced counseling skills and group psychotherapy
Graduate Supervision
I have been the primary supervisor or co-supervisor of 27 PhD students, 54 MA students, 23 MEd students
and other masters students eg MSW, MScN. Students that I have supervised /mentored have received
approximately 2.5 million dollars in scholarship funding
