WINNIPEG -- A University of Manitoba professor has been awarded more than a million dollars to study child maltreatment and how it can be prevented.

Dr. Tracie Afifi, who is a professor in the department of community health sciences and psychiatry at the University of Manitoba has been awarded a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Childhood Adversity and Resilience.

As part of the award, she has been provided $1.4 million over the next seven years to help her research.

Afifi is currently researching how child maltreatment is associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes.

"Childhood maltreatment typically includes abuse and neglect," said Afifi, adding it can range from physical to mental abuse.

Part of her research is looking at preventative efforts and said she believes if child maltreatment can be prevented it could change a child's path, improve their health, and also strengthen families.

Afifi said a study done in Canada in 2014 found that 32 per cent of adults had experienced childhood maltreatment.

"So there are two things we really want to do. Number one, the most important is we want to try to find evidence-based methods and interventions to actually prevent the child maltreatment from happening in the first place and the other thing we want to do is to have better ways to intervene," she said.

Afifi added children are in several environments as they grow up, including at home, at school, and in the community. She said it is important to understand how those environments can potentially put kids at risk and which areas are protective.

"So parenting is definitely a very important target. We need to make sure that we are reducing mental health problems and stress for parents. We need to think about substance use in the household. We need to think about parental conflict and also things like poverty is really important in those areas."

Afifi also said that removing children from homes is something that should be a last resort and that she hopes with her research they can find ways to make a home safer and decrease the number of children who are removed from their homes.

She added over the next seven years she hopes to find better outcomes for kids who do end up experiencing abuse or neglect.