Colleen Dell

Colleen Anne Dell is a Canadian public sociologist, animal-assisted intervention practitioner, and academic. She is a professor and Centennial Enhancement Chair in One Health & Wellness in the Department of Sociology and associate in the School of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan. She is most known for her research on criminal justice, mental health, substance abuse, and Indigenous peoples’ health.

Dell’s current program of research applies a community-based and patient-oriented participatory approach with both humans and animals. Dell's research focuses on how helpful the human-animal bond can be to promote wellness among individuals, communities, and animals. She pays particular attention to the One Health concept of "zooeyia"—how interaction with companion animals can benefit the health of people. Her team’s research in the field has received media recognition, and has been featured by CNN, People Magazine, Canadian Press, NPR, Medscape, and The New York Times.

Since 2019, she has been associated with the Strategic Development Group for Multispecies Dementia International Research Network.

Education Dell graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Winnipeg in 1992. She then enrolled at the University of Manitoba, and received her master's degree in sociology in 1996. She earned her doctoral degree in the Department of Sociology at Carleton University in 2001.

In 2022, NPR News featured Dell’s work on the integration of therapy dogs as a way to echo Indigenous holistic approaches to health. Other research by Dell and her team suggests that culture-based interventions integrated into addictions treatment for Indigenous people can help improve client functioning in all areas of wellness. Alongside the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation, in 2015 Dell co-led the development of the Native Wellness Assessment, a measurement tool to demonstrate the efficacy of cultural interventions from a foundation of Indigenous evidence.

In a 2008 study, Dell and her team determined the association between the beliefs of a group of adult, male prisoners in Iran about the transmission of HIV and their high-risk practices while in prison. The team found that educational harm reduction initiatives that are intended to promote the effectiveness of strategies designed to reduce the risk of HIV transmission may also decrease prisoners' high-risk behaviors. In 2010 she wrote about harm reduction policies for Indigenous peoples in Canada, and integrated these understandings into the therapy dog field with Indigenous opioid agonist therapy program patients. She co-published this work with program staff, a patient, and a therapy dog. She also led a study in understanding the role of service dogs in the health of veterans diagnosed with PTSD and substance use disorder.

Dell's study on the stigma faced by Indigenous women with substance use health concerns was translated into a workshop and accompanying song and video, titled From Stilettos to Moccasins. More recently, the findings of her team’s therapy dog emergency department controlled trial were translated into an animated plain language short video. As co-founder and facilitator with Darlene Chalmers of the PAWSitive Support prison program, they have undertaken evaluations of the impact of therapy dogs in federal correctional institutions and shared them in an Animal Memories magazine. This and other gathered knowledge has been developed into an online therapy dog handler education course, released in 2022. Her team’s study with service dogs have also been translated into an online education course for trainers, released 2022.

In 2011 Dell co-edited a Special Edition Substance Use & Misuse journal on volatile substance misuse.

Selected awards and honors 1995 - Winnipeg City Community Service Award, Maples Youth Services Canada Project 2007 - European Union Visitor’s Program Award, Delegation of the European Commission to Canada 2010 - Profile, Herstory: The Canadian Women's Calendar 2010 - Women of Distinction Award, Research, Science and Technology category, YWCA 2010 - Top 10 Research Success Story, 10th Anniversary Special Issue of Intersections, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Institute of Gender and Health 2017 - Appointment as Member (Investiture Recipient) to The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (The Order of St. John) for humanitarian work in animal assisted interventions, at the Senate of Canada, Ottawa, ON 2018 - Lady Justice Award, Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan 2022 - Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award - University of Saskatchewan, College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies 2022 - Appointment as Officer (Investiture Recipient) to The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (The Order of St. John), at Governor‘s House in Regina, SK 2023 - Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (SK) in the field of Health Care Research