What Do We Want to Build
from the Embers?
Brain-CE’s Foster Innovation pillar doesn’t chase novelty for its own sake. We co-create community-informed, prevention-focused solutions that shift care from reactive treatment to proactive resilience, from greener schoolyards to a national youth internship.
We design and evaluate innovative solutions through community co-design, youth programs, clinical tool development, and creative knowledge translation that empower communities and shift healthcare toward prevention.
Guided by Dr. Christine Gibson
Dr. Christine Gibson
Dr. Gibson brings design-thinking, climate psychology, and a trauma-informed framework to Brain-CE’s innovation pillar. She studies pre-traumatic stress and climate grief as clinical realities requiring systemic, not just individual, responses. As a director sponsor, she reviews innovation outputs so they stay grounded in community needs.
Innovation Initiatives, Fall 2026
Each initiative has a named team and a clear next milestone. Several are recruiting fellows for the cycle that starts October 19.
NeuroClimate Youth Internship
Our first national youth program: a free, fully virtual summer internship where Canadian high school students learn how climate change shapes brain health and equity, then build an original knowledge-mobilization project in small teams with a mentor.
Presented with the Climate Health System Alliance and the O’Brien Institute for Public Health, and funded by Howl Canada. The 2026 cohort presents at Demo Day, with standout projects published on brainclimate.org and the O’Brien Institute platform.
Brain-Healthy Green Spaces
What green schoolyards and campuses do for attention, stress and wellbeing, and why greening is an equity issue for the places young people spend their days. Fall 2026 deliverable: a full draft of a perspective article.
Youth Climate Mind
Plain-language resources that help young people name and cope with eco-anxiety and climate grief. The Glossary for Youth is complete; this cycle the team builds the youth toolkit with Green Minds Canada.
Children’s Climate-Health Storybook
A Canadian children’s book on climate emotions and brain health resilience for daycares, preschools and libraries, grounded in Dr. Gibson’s framework on climate grief and age-appropriate resilience.
Schools and University Network
Climate and brain health clubs with a ready-to-run six-session kit and virtual mentoring from Brain-CE fellows. Pilot schools begin in early 2027.
Clinical Screening Tools
Practical screening tools for climate-related psychological distress that family physicians and mental health practitioners can use to identify and support patients experiencing climate anxiety, pre-traumatic stress, and solastalgia.
What We Mean by Innovation
Innovation at Brain-CE is not about technology for its own sake. It is about asking harder questions and building from the embers of what isn’t working.
Prevention Over Treatment
Every innovation initiative is designed to shift the system toward prevention, not just better tools for treating harms that could have been avoided.
Community-Informed
The communities most affected by climate-neurological harms are co-designers of solutions, from our Nagar Kirtan outreach tent to youth-built internship projects.
Creative as Well as Clinical
A storybook and a policy brief are both innovations. They just reach different people.
Replicable & Scalable
What we build, like the six-session schools kit, is designed so other communities and institutions can run it themselves.
Innovate With Us
Join an innovation project as a fellow this cycle (apply by October 4), or complete a cycle and pitch your own one-page idea for the next one.