Many people suffer from negative health behaviours, reduced health status and inappropriate access to and/or use of health services associated with being part of a vulnerable population. Focusing on five settings – community, workplace, clinical-community interface, school and international – this multidisciplinary unit will undertake research aimed at developing health promotion strategies to help reduce these disparities. The unit’s emphasis will be on development of better tools, methods and resources for conducting research with vulnerable populations, and improvements in knowledge translation and dissemination of research findings.
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Musculoskeletal Research Centre: New Coordinated Applications for Bone Health
This multi-disciplinary unit is focused on improving current treatment of fractures, developing and implementing primary and secondary prevention strategies and developing new knowledge about mechanisms underlying bone health and disease. This includes research exploring the role of bone mineral as an important determinant of joint health. The unit’s goal is the development and translation of new knowledge to optimize bone health and minimize the burden of osteoporosis and fracture.
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NEXUS: Researching the Social Contexts of Health Behaviour
NEXUS is a multidisciplinary research unit focused on developing knowledge, interventions and policy recommendations that are sensitive to the social contexts that shape health behaviours of individuals and practices of health care providers. Unit researchers will focus on exploring, describing and recommending actions to address the social contexts that create barriers to health, affect individual capacity to maintain a healthy lifestyle or to effectively seek and benefit from health services, and influence how systems (such as health and judicial) respond.
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Solid Tumour Progression Research Unit
Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy are routinely used for treating solid tumours. However, there are very few therapies that are effective in countering metastatic progression (spread to other areas of the body), which is the major cause of death associated with solid tumours. This unit aims to develop and evaluate novel compounds that control or prevent solid tumour metastasis.
Centre for Health and Environmental Research
The goal of this unit is primary prevention of disease associated with environmental hazards, including regional and local air pollution; emerging water and airborne microbacterial hazards; moulds and other indoor air pollutants as well as indoor hazards such as classroom acoustical quality; and hazards particular to certain occupations. Researchers will focus on four areas: identifying basic mechanisms and risk factors for environmental influences on health; quantifying the risks; developing and evaluating interventions; and developing and evaluating strategies for communicating risks and their solutions to community stakeholders and decision-makers.
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The James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research
This unit brings together a multidisciplinary group of researchers, in the UBC departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Medicine and Pharmacology & Therapeutics, whose efforts are directed at developing effective strategies and interventions to prevent, detect and treat heart, lung and blood vessel diseases. The researchers are particularly interested in discovering how interactions between genetic and environmental factors lead to the development of particular disease manifestations, including variations in susceptibility to these diseases, severity of symptoms and the rate at which symptoms progress.
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Terry Fox Laboratory
The overall goal of this unit is to make breakthroughs in the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cancer by focusing on the role and therapeutic promise of stem cells. Studies will focus on defining molecular pathways that govern stem cell renewal, viability, their development into specific types of cells (such as bone and blood) and their ability to multiply in a variety of body tissue. Researchers are particularly interested in understanding how inherited and acquired gene mutations may influence these processes and contribute to the development of cancer.
Centre for Blood Research and Laboratory for Molecular Biophysics
The Centre for Blood Research (CBR) applies contemporary methods of biotechnology to the study of blood and blood processing to enhance the Canadian blood system. This unit brings together the CBR and UBC’s Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, a campus-wide resource for physically characterizing biological macromolecules (such as those that make up blood) through advanced instrument/technology research, development and support. With the clustering of clinical scientists, basic scientists and engineers in one space, this unit is uniquely positioned to create new, fundamental and practical knowledge in transfusion science.
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Who “crashes” onto dialysis? Impact of social determinants of health on renal patients’ access to dialysis treatment
Despite the fact that chronic kidney disease almost always presents warning signs, 30-50 percent of new renal patients in BC “crash” onto dialysis or are referred late for assessment of kidney disease. Both scenarios are associated with increased morbidity (severity of symptoms), increased hospital stays, reduced opportunities for more ambulatory modes of care, such as peritoneal dialysis or early kidney transplant, and increased mortality (incidence of death). There is much to be learned about the range of possible determinants that may influence renal patients’ ability to access treatment. Nancy Blythe will investigate the social determinants of health of 1300 renal patients who initiated dialysis in BC in 2001-2002. Her aim is to determine whether certain social structural barriers in society (availability of social support, adequate income, etc.) constrains patients from seeking treatment before their chronic illness advances to an acute stage, resulting in late referral to the health system or the onset of dialysis under emergency conditions. Subsequently she will study whether those same social barriers and suboptimal initial access negatively influence ongoing access to dialysis as well as morbidity and mortality. It is anticipated that the research results will contribute to better ways of assisting renal patients to obtain optimal access to this life support treatment.
Addressing needs through action: what can be done to help HIV positive kids (8 and up) to ""live positively"" in BC within their broader healthcare community?
There is little published information about Canadian children with HIV especially about the health-related needs of adolescents. Yet it is during this period when they begin dealing with issues such as disclosure, psychosocial therapy, HIV prevention and sexual health, that support is most needed. Sarah Fielden is examining the health needs of children with HIV and developing strategies to meet them. Her research involves conducting focus groups with children and adolescents, families and service providers to capture a range of perspectives on this issue, and to specifically explore factors in the health system and community that allow children and adolescents to “live positively”. Sarah’s aim is to help improve the health and health care of children with HIV, and assist health care providers, academics, organizations and families in developing effective, age-appropriate interventions.