Home - Saunders Lab

About us

Our lab uses population-based health data, clinical epidemiology, and health services research to improve care and outcomes for children, youth, and families. Much of our work focuses on conditions and experiences that cross traditional clinical boundaries, including mental and physical health, acute and outpatient care, individual and family-level risk, and health and social systems.

Research

Our current research is organized around four overlapping areas:

Somatic symptom and related disorders and integrated care.

We study children and adolescents with somatic symptom and related disorders, functional symptoms, and other complex presentations where physical symptoms, emotional distress, family context, and health care use intersect. Our work aims to improve how these conditions are identified and measured, characterize clinically meaningful subgroups of children and families, and inform integrated care pathways that support earlier recognition, consistent diagnostic communication, rehabilitation, mental health care, and family engagement.

Mental health system and primary care system measurement and performance.

We measure how children and youth access mental health, primary care, emergency, hospital, and specialist services, with a focus on gaps in care, care integration, and system performance. This work includes children with co-occurring physical and mental health needs and aims to inform practical approaches to improving timely, coordinated, and equitable care.

Injury epidemiology, violence, and family health.

Our injury research examines the epidemiology and prevention of paediatric injury, including firearm-related injuries and injuries associated with social and structural vulnerability. A growing body of work examines outcomes for children whose mothers have experienced violence or serious injury, with attention to how family violence, maternal injury, caregiving disruption, and health system responses may shape children’s safety, health, and service needs.

Health system access and outcomes for immigrant and refugee children and youth.

We use linked health, administrative, and immigration data to examine mental health outcomes, injury risk, service use, and access to care among immigrant and refugee children and youth. This work aims to identify inequities in care and inform more responsive health system planning for diverse populations.

Across all areas, our goal is to generate evidence that can be translated into better clinical pathways, more integrated care, and health system interventions that recognize the experiences of children and families in context.

View our publications on PubMed or Google Scholar

Our team

Principal Investigator

Dr. Natasha Saunders MD, M.Sc., FRCPC

Dr. Natasha Saunders is a Clinician-Investigator in the Division of Paediatric Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and a Senior Associate Scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences at the SickKids Research Institute. She is an Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto and a Health Services Researcher at IC/ES (formerly the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences).

Dr. Saunders’ primary areas of clinical practice are general paediatric hospitalist medicine and outpatient consultant general paediatrics. She consults on a wide spectrum of acute and chronic childhood conditions requiring tertiary level assessment or management and has a clinical focus on children and adolescents with complex, often diagnostically challenging, co-occurring physical and mental health conditions. Saunders’ research interests include access to and quality of care for children and youth with a specific focus on injuries and mental health of children and youth, and primary care delivery and using large, linked health and administrative databases to understand health service delivery.

Appointments

Clinician-Investigator, Division of Paediatric Medicine, SickKids
Senior Associate Scientist, Child Health Evaluative Sciences Program, SickKids Research Institute
Adjunct Scientist, ICES
Associate Professor, Department of Paediatrics and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto