Four FHS faculty receive prestigious Michael Smith Health Research BC research awards

Kiffer Card - 2021 MSHRBC Scholar Award: Exploring mechanisms, pathways, and mitigation strategies to prevent loneliness, social isolation, and their deleterious health impacts

We experience hunger so we eat, thirst so we drink, tiredness so we sleep, and loneliness so we find social connection. Social needs are fundamental to humans and when we are lonely the body’s central stress response system is dysregulated. As a result, our capacity to manage stress, inflammation, and energy reserves is reduced. The end result: lonely people live shorter and sicker lives.

In the wake of COVID-19, which itself manifested in an era of already increasing social isolation, it has never been more important to study loneliness. Yet, while a robust literature base has examined loneliness in older adults, we still know very little about what we can do to respond to experiences of loneliness across the life-course. This is particularly true in marginalized populations, such as gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM), who are especially vulnerable to social exclusion and related stressors, but they also exhibit unique coping strategies that may buffer these effects.

My research will help us better understand the epidemiology of loneliness among gbMSM in order to prevent its deleterious effects on these individuals, their communities, and the broader population in the wake of COVID-19.

Kiffer Card is an adjunct professor with the Faculty of Health Sciences and is completing a post-doctoral fellowship at University of Victoria. He will be joining FHS full-time in 2022.

Lindsay Hedden - 2021 MSHRBC Scholar Award: Informing the future of primary care: Virtual care, workforce optimization and the learning health system

Primary care is the foundation of strong health systems, ensuring people stay healthy and get care when needed. However, timely access to high-quality primary care is an ongoing problem in British Columbia and other provinces.

My program of research aims to ensure that all British Columbians can access quality primary care how and when they need it. The central project I lead uses information from interviews with health professionals (physicians, nurse practitioners and nurses) and patients; data from the health system; and provincial policy documents to study access to, experiences with, and outcomes from virtual primary care. Complementary research will inform modernization of the primary care workforce and informing ideal deployment of providers in team-based models in the context of COVID-19 and beyond. Finally, I lead work about implementation of “learning health systems” to support continuous improvement and innovation in primary care and across the health system more broadly.

My work follows an integrated knowledge translation model; I work with a team of researchers, policy makers, clinicians and patient partners to co-produce knowledge and address important and relevant questions that are driven by their combined input.

Lindsay Hedden is an assistant professor with the Faculty of Health Sciences and serves as an assistant scientific director for Michael Smith Health Research BC (formerly the BC Academic Health Science Network).

Dawn Hoogeveen - 2021 MSHRBC Trainee Award + 2021 Health System Impact Fellowship: 

Trainee Award - Healing indicators: Developing community-based Indigenous health assessment

Healing Indicators is a project that aims to improve health policy and assessment processes by creating tools that centre communities and Indigenous knowledge. The work is in response to the need to better assess the health impacts of resource development in Indigenous communities. This project is in partnership with the British Columbia First Nations Health Authority and Simon Fraser University, and is deeply committed to engaging in Indigenous methodologies, land-based health and healing, and health justice. It features an approach that strives to decolonize public health: the research approach is integrated, connecting land-based perspectives on health and wellness, and cultural foundations into population health reporting.

The question this research asks, is “What principles and processes are needed to create and develop indicators relevant to First Nations in relation to resource development and related policy?” Research will help support Indigenous health assessments through the collaborative creation of land-based healing indicators, that prioritize Indigenous perspectives and needs through community-based research. A goal of this work is to undertake culturally safe research in an applied health sciences 

Health System Impact Fellowship - Healing Indicators: Research in Indigenous health impact assessment and self-determination

(This Health System Impact Fellowship is co-funded by CIHR, MSFHR, and First Nations Health Authority to help build BC’s health policy research capacity for the integration of policy research into decision-making.)

Healing Indicators is a research project that aims to improve health assessment policy. It addresses the need to create tools that centre communities and Indigenous knowledge in the assessment of the health impacts of resource development. The project is grounded in community-based Indigenous methods, with the purpose of developing land-based wellness indicators. The work draws on self-determination, culture, kinship, community, and land to inform and define health and wellness in a First Nations context. As a research program, Healing Indicators is committed to engaging land-based healing and health justice and features a decolonial ‘two-eyed seeing’ approach, with one eye informed by Indigenous ways of knowing, and the other western science. Progressing land-based indicator research is important within the context of the First Nations Health Authority’s “Public Health and Wellness Agenda.” Land-based health indicator development requires emergent community-based methods and design that is inclusive of leadership from Indigenous peoples. The impact of this collaboration is the promotion of critical Indigenous health research, with opportunities to expand on policy gaps in relation to land-based wellness and Indigenous health assessment. Asset-based work, such as this, is relevant within the context of provincially acknowledged widespread racism within the health care system in British Columbia. This work is also significant to the provincial commitment to implement the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPA 2019). Healing Indicators is a collaborative research project designed to promote community-led health through land-based indicator development to inform self-determination and wellness in collaboration with the First Nations Health Authority.

Dawn Hoogeveen is an university research associate with the Faculty of Health Sciences. 

Angela Kaida - 2021 Convening and Collaborating Award (C2): Beyond the Binary in BC: Taking a patient-oriented and trauma-informed approach to building partnerships and dialogue to incorporate gender equity into women’s health research

Dedicated women’s health research is a relatively recent milestone. Available guidance for including trans and intersex people in this work has not acknowledged the social, historical and political contexts that led to naming cisgender women (women whose gender aligns with their sex assigned at birth) in research, and tends to be focused either on clinical work (e.g. how to refer to patients and their anatomy) or on data collection (e.g. how to ask about sex and gender).

“Beyond the Binary” will include a survey to assess current gender-equity initiatives in BC, two educational workshops, and two knowledge exchange events to inform guidance for gender-equitable practice within BC’s women’s health research community. To co-create safe, trauma-informed, and patient-oriented guidance, trans and intersex people will be invited to participate in these activities and to participate on a Community Steering Committee. Through collaboration with people from trans, intersex, research, health, ethics, and academic communities, we aim to develop context-specific guidance, resources, and recommendations for researchers and health decision-makers to bridge this knowledge gap.

Team members: Beverley Pomeroy (Fraser Health); Laurel Evans (UBC); Caroline Sanders (University of Northern British Columbia); Ann Pederson (BC Women’s Hospital + Health Centre); Michelle Chan (UBC); Tamara Baldwin (UBC); Lindsay Carpenter (University of Northern British Columbia); Faith Jabs (UBC); Skye Barbic (UBC); Julia Santana Parrila (Women’s Health Research Institute); Nicole Prestley-Stuart (Women’s Health Research Institute); Lorraine Greaves (Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health); Lori Brotto (UBC); Wendy Robinson (BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute); Melissa Nelson (Women’s Health Research Institute); AJ Murray (BC Women’s Hospital + Health Centre)

Angela Kaida is an associate professor with the Faculty of Health Sciences and the CRC Chair in Global Global Perspectives in HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health