Your Health Begins with the Food You Eat

Our Clinical Research Unit is comprised of highly trained personnel and equipment to help investigators conduct safe and controlled studies of children and adults.  We have provincially licensed, full-serve kitchen and dining facility to conduct your feeding studies.  We offer space for physical examinations, blood collection and analyses facilities, a metabolic cart for oxygen consumption analyses and energy expenditure measurements, a dual X-ray for bone density and body composition analysis and more.  We have recently upgraded our clinical research unit to take it on the road!  Our new Mobile Research Unit allows us to transport our clinical examination equipment to participants in and out of Manitoba.

Individual participant commitment to studies varies based on the requirements of the trial. Some studies involve minimal visits to RCFFN, whereas others include daily visits to pick up and/or consume at least one of the daily meals for the duration of the trial.

Volunteer Opportunities

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Clinical Equipment

Richardson Centre Clinical Research Unit (RCCRU) helps investigators conduct safe, controlled inpatient and outpatient studies in children and adults. The RCCRU offers:

• Clinical office for physical examination
• Blood collection facility with trained phlebotomists
• Biosafety cabinets for processing blood samples
• Autoanalyzer unit capable of determining blood chemistry. Specific blood tests including cardiovascular and immunological markers, enzymes and other measurements
• Pulse-oximeter
• Metabolic cart for energy expenditure and exercise testing.
• Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry 
• EndoPAT system  

Kitchen and Dining Facilities

RCFFN is equipped with an advanced metabolic kitchen that permits careful preparation of fixed diets for clinical trials, and is capable of preparing specific diets where certain foods and nutrients are controlled for several individuals simultaneously.