Rx for change:
Rethinking health science
When it comes to improving health care, we believe bright minds and bold action are the best medicine. With significant new funding and facilities, researchers at Simon Fraser University are prescribing creative solutions to health challenges at home and abroad.
Promoting health, preventing disease: that’s the focus of our new Faculty of Health Sciences—the first of its kind in Canada. Our pioneering programs target public and population health, global health, mental health, and chronic and infectious disease control.
- Related Links:
- Faculty of Health Sciences
Our work is key to better health care planning and policy.
Health science professor Tim Takaro is proving eco-friendly homes can be better than drugs for asthmatic kids.
Health science professor Marina Morrow and public policy professor Olena Hankivsky helped write Women’s Health in Canada: Critical Perspectives on Theory and Policy, the groundbreaking new textbook on women’s health that promises to redefine medical treatment for female patients around the world.
Health science professor Michel Joffres established that halving salt intake could eliminate hypertension in a million Canadians—and save $430 million annually in health costs.
- Related Links:
- Michel Joffres’ website
- Cut salt use in half - SFU-led study
Engineering science professor Bozena Kaminska began testing tiny disposable wireless biosensors that can detect and monitor physiological signals such as heart rate and mechanical heart function in real time. The device will help health providers target at-risk individuals sooner and ensure they see a specialist early.
A team of SFU engineering science undergraduates devised an economical way to help lifeguards more accurately assess the condition of potential drowning victims with a waterproof heart-monitoring system that rescuers can use to determine whether a victim has a pulse—important for deciding if and/or how to apply CPR.
- Related Links:
- SFU Engineering Science
- Pulse-checking device helps lifeguards
SFU research is making better health possible for everyone.
The Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction recently helped the provincial government assess the housing needs of people with severe addictions and/or mental disorders—and weigh the real costs of inaction.
- Related Links:
- CARMHA website
- Clarifying B.C.’s real homeless count
Health scientist Elliot Goldner will chair the newly formed Mental Health Commission of Canada’s advisory committee on science.
SFU will house the first national chair in autism research and intervention in an effort to increase the number of qualified professionals available to serve families and youth.
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- Autism experts to chart new research directions
Political science PhD student Sherri Brown will use a $150,000 Trudeau Foundation scholarship to help make life-saving drugs more accessible to HIV/AIDS patients in developing nations.
- Related Links:
- Political science student nabs Trudeau scholarship
In 2007, SFU joined esteemed international partners such as Johns Hopkins University and Emory University to became the first Canadian university to sign an agreement with the Public Health Foundation of India to begin training future faculty for seven new Institutes of Public Health in that country.
Our researchers hold the dream. Our students, the desire. Our donors make the difference.
Djavad Mowafaghian’s $4-million gift will help identify ways to improve children’s physical and mental health, and build a containment lab for infectious disease research.
A $4.5-million Merck Frosst BC Leadership Chair in Pharmaceutical Genomics in Drug Discovery will bring pharmaceutical industry expertise to BC’s biotech sector.
A $4.5-million Pfizer/Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC & Yukon Chair in Cardiovascular Prevention Research at St. Paul's Hospital will develop new strategies for preventing heart disease—the leading cause of death in Canada.
- Related Links:
- Chair in Cardiovascular Research
