The Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research (CIMVHR) held an open house on Wednesday at its new location in Kingston Hall.

The new office – Room 301 – offers a larger, newly-renovated space that will help the CIMVHR team to meet the needs of its mission to enhance the lives of Canadian military personnel, veterans and their families by harnessing the national capacity for research.

“What’s really good for us is the whole team is now in one space,” says Alice Aiken, CIMVHR director and an associate professor and head of the Physical Therapy Program in the School of Rehabilitation Therapy. “The group has always been very functional, they’ve always worked really well together but this really consolidated us as a team.”

Previously, the institute was dispersed within the Faculty of Health Sciences, including the main office in Botterell Hall.  The new space also has a boardroom where meetings can be held with the Board of Directors and various advisory councils when they visit Queen’s University.

The new location also has a historical link to the military, points out Stephanie Belanger, associate director of the CIMVHR and associate professor at the French Department of the Royal Military College of Canada.

“The fact that this space is in a building that was a hospital during the First World War is so meaningful,” she says. “It’s the open space too. With the working in teams that we do, it really reflects what we do with all the institutes working together as well.”

CIMVHR is currently partnered with 37 universities across Canada. The institute acts as a channel between the academic community, government organizations, industry and similar international organizations to address the health and well-being of military personnel, veterans and their families.