Nancy Butcher

Dr. Butcher is a medical researcher and methodologist who leads the TORCH (Toronto Outcomes Research in Child Health) initiative at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a Cundill Scholar at the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in Medical Science and a post-doctoral fellowship at CAMH. She received her MSc (Psychology & Neuroscience) and BSc (Neuroscience) from Dalhousie University. Prior to joining SickKids, she was a mental health clinical trialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She directs the Toronto EQUATOR Canada Publication School and is a member of the SickKids Research Integrity Committee. 

Research Synopsis

Dr. Butcher’s research is focused on improving research quality and health outcomes in neuropsychiatric and other pediatric populations. Her current focus is on advancing clinical research methodology and publication practices so that clinical research studies are meaningful and useful to research knowledge users such as patients, clinicians, other researchers, and policymakers. Her research to date has been primarily focused on two themes: (1) the development and dissemination of methods and tools to improve outcome selection, measurement, and reporting, with specific interests in mental health and neurodevelopmental populations, and (2) neuropsychiatric and treatment outcomes associated with a rare multisystem genomic disorder, the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. 

Recent Publications

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5152-0108

Selected recent publications (2020):

Stallwood EJ, Monsour A, Rodrigues C, Monga S, Terwee C, Offringa M, Butcher NJ. 2020. The measurement properties of the Children’s Depression Rating Scale-Revised (CDRS-R) for adolescents with major depressive disorder: A systematic review. In press, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.10.009

Mew E, Monsour A, Saeed L, Santos L, Patel S, Courtney D, Watson PN, Szatmari P, Offringa M, Monga S, Butcher NJ. 2020. Systematic scoping review identifies heterogeneity in outcomes measured in adolescent depression clinical trials. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 126:71-79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.06.013

Butcher NJ, Tricco A, Offringa M, Moher D, Galica J. 2020. Training researchers in publication science: Why, what, and how. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 62:117:165-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2019.08.007

Monsour A, Mew E, Patel S, Chee-a-tow A, Santos L, Saeed L, Courtney D, Watson PN, Monga S, Szatmari P, Offringa M, Butcher NJ. 2020. Primary outcome reporting in adolescent depression clinical trials: standardization needed. BMC Medical Research Methodology. 20:129.                          https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-020-01019-6

Butcher NJ, Mew EJ, Monsour A, Chan A-W, Moher D, Offringa M. 2020. Outcome reporting recommendations for clinical trial protocols and reports: a scoping review. Trials. 21:620. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-020-04440-w

Monga S, Offringa M, Butcher NJ, Szatmari P. From research to practice: the importance of outcome selection, measurement, and reporting in pediatric mental health research. 2020. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 59:497-500.                                      https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2019.08.468

Butcher NJ, Monsour A, Mew EJ, Szatmari P, Pierro A, Kelly LE, Farid-Kapadia M, Chee-a-tow A, Saeed L, Monga S, Ungar W, Terwee CB, Vohra S, Fergusson D, Askie LM, Williamson PR, Chan A-W, Moher D, Offringa M. 2019. Improving outcome reporting in clinical trial reports and protocols: study protocol for the Instrument for reporting of Planned Endpoints in Clinical Trials (InsPECT). Trials. 20:161.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-019-3248-0