Fall 2022 Participants

SFU Research Lead: David B. Zandvliet, Professor, Faculty of Education; UNESCO Chair Bio-cultural Diversity and Education Director, Institute for Environmental Learning

Community Partner Organization: Science World

Science World's publicly accessible TD trail tells the story of sustainability in the False Creek community. It promotes community connections by highlighting changes in food systems, management of storm water and energy, and other impacts in the local community. Solutions for sustainability are constantly changing and it is important that a broad range of cultural perspectives be included as part of the dialogue. 

CERi funding aligns with the cultural  knowledge and oral storytelling component to learn about/from the past in creating a more sustainable future for False Creek. 

SFU Research Leads: Donald MacPherson, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences and Erin Howley, Research Associate, Canadian Drug Policy Coalition

Imagine Safe Supply explores thoughts and attitudes about meaningful participation in safe supply for people who use drugs and frontline workers. The objectives of this research are to clarify needs and pathways for meaningful participation in safe supply, and to identify gaps and opportunities for safe supply strategies that are responsive to dual overdose and COVID health crises.

CERi will support two graduate research assistants and a 5-person community-based leadership team to design and deliver knowledge sharing materials based on comprehensive collaborative data analysis.

SFU Research Lead:

• PI: Dr. Evelyn Encalada Grez - Labour Studies – Sociology and Anthropology
• Co-investigator: Dr. Paola Ardiles - Faculty of Health Sciences

Community Partners:

• RADIUS SFU
• Canadian on Paper Society for Immigrant Physicians Equality (COPSIPE)
• Trained to Save Lives
• Members of the project’s advisory committee

This community-engaged project emerged from a social media campaign, Trained to Save Lives, advocating for government action to address barriers in the medical licensing process for internationally trained physicians. The research explores the experiences of internationally trained doctors and their access to medical licensure. Furthermore, it examines the impacts of exclusionary licensing policies on their mental health and professional identities.

CERi funding will support a community researcher to conduct knowledge translation activities, including report dissemination and peer-reviewed publications.

SFU Research Lead: Cher Hill

Community Partner Organization: Maddaugh Elementary 

This project responds to calls from environmentalists and Indigenous leaders for immediate action to care for salmon, while simultaneously developing empirically informed novel approaches to ecological education. As teachers, Elders, and researchers we work collaboratively to reconfigure pedagogical encounters involving children and the natural world to be more reciprocal and respectful, as well as responsive to the ecological crisis, while studying our process.

The development of novel place-conscious pedagogical methods requires deep collaboration between teachers, Elders and scholars. CERi funds will be used to include graduate students and community members in knowledge mobilization.

SFU Research Lead: Caitlin Courchesne, PhD Student, Department of Psychology (Clinical Psychology)

Community Partner Organization: BC SUPPORT Unit – Fraser Centre

Many people experience physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms months to years after a concussion. Unfortunately, few evidence-based treatments exist for those experiencing prolonged recovery. Digital technology might help to bridge the existing gap in services for adults with persistent post-concussion symptoms. Using community engaged practices, we will co-develop a smartphone app-based treatment with a patient partner working group and collaboratively determine patient-oriented outcomes for a pilot trial of its feasibility.

CERi funding will critically support honoraria for patient partners (i.e., individuals with lived experience of prolonged concussion recovery) as well as a student trainee stipend.

SFU Research Lead: Lucy Kervin, PhD Candidate, Department of Gerontology

Community Partner Organization: Marpole Oakridge Family Place, The South Vancouver Seniors Network

A growing number of Canadians are aging without informal (family or friend) care support, known as Older Adults Without Advocates (OAWAs). Informal carers often support older adults’ navigation of fragmented care systems, leaving OAWAs at-risk of inequitable care access.

We will uncover the barriers experienced by Canadian OAWAs in accessing and navigating health and social care services, and factors that may improve their access. This will be achieved through qualitative interviews with health and social care providers and OAWAs.

The CERi grant provides critical support for the provision of honoraria for interview participants, gifts to our community partners supporting recruitment and analysis activities, and the development of knowledge mobilization outputs (infographics, posters, social media content, evidence briefs).

SFU Research Lead: Sandeep Dhillon, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Gerontology

Community Partner Organization: Moving Forward Family Services

South Asians make up 60% of Canada’s immigrant population, with Punjabis being the fastest-growing subpopulation of this demographic in BC. Since many Punjabi women have low health literacy skills and face cultural stigmas around mental health, community-based health promotion (CBHP) programs are needed. However, such programs typically focus on supporting affluent White groups. Working with Moving Forward Family Services, the aim of this project is to evaluate the virtual CBHP program “Healing Through Ancient Teachings,” which was exclusively created for Punjabi women aged 50+ by a well-known community advocate, Ms. Jas Cheema to develop coping mechanisms for their mental health.

CERi will provide funding to support a student researcher, community engagement in collaborating knowledge mobilization strategies, and participant honorarium for interviews.

SFU Research Lead: Dr. Maya Gislason

Community Partner Organization: Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI)

This project will utilize community asset-mapping to support Cortes Island’s development of a Climate Resiliency Plan. Partnering with Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI), we will work towards filling existing gaps in rural climate change data, center the voices of local equity-seeking individuals, ground-truth existing data collected on Cortes Island through community dialogue, and support the development of FOCI’s Climate Resiliency Plan to be rooted in co-benefits for healthy people, community, and environment.

CERi funds will provide critical support for conducting the community asset-mapping, and honoraria for community participants.

SFU Research Lead: Dr. Sonya Cressman

Building on the relationships we have developed with the AIRWISE series of community-engaged lung health studies, we begin to walk a path towards improving breath/air communications. The focus of this Indigenous-led research study is to create an ethical space for collaborative learning.  Together we commit to using multiple ways of knowing to build better communication materials about living and breathing. We will use design justice—a method of design that honours tradition and cultural wisdom—to guide this initial step in our jointly-defined research process.

SFU Research Lead: Nicole K. Stewart

Between Facebook, WhatsApp, Roblox, Google, Netflix, Spotify, Uber and everything in between, people are heavy platform users. Using domestication theory (Silverstone et al., 1992; Silverstone, 1994; etc.), this study assesses how 30 families–including children between the ages of 0-19–in British Columbia use, store, and share communication technologies in everyday life. The study follows objects like smartphones, televisions, and smart speakers as well as streaming, gaming, and social media platforms. 

With CERi’s support, the project is expanding to include 20 more households (for a total of 50) with a view to improving the representation of young adults, seniors, and marginalized populations.