Hormonal contraceptives (HC) are used by 850 million girls, women and people with uteri — all reflected in the term women+ — , and 16 percent of people (5-49Y) in Canada. In addition to being contraceptives, HCs are prescribed off-label to treat many other conditions. Few studies have examined effects of these hormones on the brain; however, recent work suggests they can increase risk for mood disorders during adolescence and alter brain activation patterns. Yet, how HC use may influence long-term brain health is not known. Understanding brain health, especially through an equity lens, is critical. Women+ experience different brain health symptoms as a result of their unique experience of stress, which is impacted by age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Stress outcomes affect disease risk, which is also influenced by HCs. Collaborations between academics and research users are vital to understanding the unique ways that women+’s lives impact their brain health. This conference will explore how HCs influence women+’s brain health by bringing together researchers, clinicians, community partners, trainees, and policymakers to exchange knowledge and identify new research priorities that fill knowledge gaps and address patient experiences.
Team members: Katherine Moore (Women’s Health Research Cluster); Jesse Lacasse (Concordia University); Bonnie Lee (UBC); Jennifer Williams (McMaster University); Maureen MacDonald (McMaster University); Nafissa Ismail (University of Ottawa); Elizabeth Hampson (University of Western Ontario); Gillian Einstein (University of Toronto); Frances Chen (UBC); Sofia Ahmed (University of Calgary).
Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) delivers over 150 programs and services in community settings across the region. Organizational learning to continuously improve health care is limited by the complexity of this delivery model, current policies and processes, barriers to coordinating data systems, and insufficient capacity for data analysis, and evidence mobilization to inform decisions. VCH is exploring the Learning Health System (LHS) framework to bridge the knowledge-to-action gap and our team aims to facilitate that effort. This proposed stakeholder engagement project — bringing together teams of researchers, VCH care providers and decision makers, patients, and community members — will explore practical strategies for co-creating a systemwide LHS for community health at VCH. Our objectives are to: 1) Organize a Design Jam to collectively identify stakeholder needs and priorities, system gaps, and actionable strategies for co-creating a Community LHS; and 2) Form a LHS Community of Practice to support long-term knowledge exchange and research collaboration. Through meeting these goals, our project will produce a shared vision, an action plan, and a Community of Practice to support the long-term co-development of a Community LHS at VCH.
Team members: Margaret Chen Mei Lin (UBC); David Hall (Providence Health Care); Brittany Bingham (Vancouver Coastal Health); Andreas Pilarinos (Vancouver Coastal Health); Shannon Field (Vancouver Coastal Health); Tracy Windsor (Canadian Mental Health Association); Elaina Moss (Canadian Mental Health Association); Steven Barnes (UBC); Sue MacDonald (VCH); Regina Casey (UBC); John Higenbottam (UBC); Andrew Day (Vancouver Coastal Health); Alexander Rutherford (Simon Fraser University); Stephania Manusha (Vancouver Coastal Health); Joleen Wright (Vancouver Coastal Health); Jae-Yung Kwon (University of Victoria); Ben Fair (UBC); Jas Dhahan (Simon Fraser University).
While breastfeeding has many health benefits for both infant and mother, many women and birthing people experience breastfeeding challenges. Insufficient supply, poor latch, and pain, as well as stigma and lack of support can impact breastfeeding goals. These challenges can be heavily influenced by social inequities, parental leave, and societal pressures, particularly among disadvantaged populations in Canada. It is important for postpartum people to receive breastfeeding support from healthcare professionals, especially during public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, where in-person contact is limited. Therefore, this C2 project will establish key networks and resources around optimal breastfeeding support in interior BC. Specific objectives are to build partnerships, conduct a needs assessment, and co-create a research agenda to develop and evaluate a virtual breastfeeding intervention study in this region. We expect to identify key aspects of virtual support that will create a thorough and meaningfully designed breastfeeding intervention study, which will ultimately lead to higher rates of breastfeeding rates, as well as improved user satisfaction and self-efficacy among parents and families in BC.
Team members: Elizabeth Keys (UBC – Okanagan); Rishma Chooniedass (UBC – Okanagan); Michele Hopkins (The Bridge Youth & Family Services); Ellen Boelcke (KCR Community Resources); Olivia Andrews (UBC – Okanagan).
The purpose of our project is to convene and collaborate with service users, health practitioners, settlement service providers, and policy makers in a series of deliberative dialogues and a multi-sector World Cafe to co-develop a program theory about integrated mental healthcare services for refugees. The global humanitarian refugee crisis has highlighted refugees as one of the most vulnerable population groups requiring integrated mental health services and supports. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has stressed healthcare systems in providing equitable, gender sensitive, language appropriate and trauma and violence informed care to diverse refugees resettled in Canada. Integrated care can improve clinical and organizational outcomes for more effective health services but limited knowledge exists on what promotes integrated mental health care for refugees, how it works, for whom and in what contexts. Convening multidisciplinary stakeholders is an important step to building a program theory and how it works. Our approach will develop an evidence informed model that will later be used and tested across multiple primary health care and social service settings to improve mental health service and promote refugee mental health.
Team members: Simon Carroll (University of Victoria); Suzanne Huot (UBC – Faculty of Medicine); Anita David (patient partner); Cindy Quan (University of Victoria); Eliseo Verdugo (University of Victoria); Maura Macphee (UBC); Sara Hosseina (New Canadian Primary Care Clinics); Karen Davison (Kwantlen Polytechnic University – Health Sciences); Vidhi Thakkar (University of Victoria; Victoria Hospice Society); Mikhail Torban (Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions); Brandon Hey (Mental Health Commission of Canada); Niels Agger-Gupta (Royal Roads University); Frank Cohn (VAST Refugee Mental Health Services Vancouver); Pamela Toor (REACH Community Health Centre).
IPV is a serious societal and medical challenge worldwide that has severe impacts on the lives of survivors. In Canada, >40 percent of women over the age of 15 who have been in an intimate partner relationship (~6.2 million women) have experienced IPV. The prevalence of IPV is particularly high in the Nanaimo and Duncan regions of Vancouver Island. Among many challenges faced by IPV survivors, the physical assaults often result in brain injuries that have short- and long-term consequences. Brain injury occurs in the vast majority of IPV survivors, yet the nature, identification, and treatment of this brain damage has been remarkably understudied. Consequently, care pathways to improve patient outcomes are extremely limited. To address this issue, the proposed activities will bring together a diverse and balanced group of scientists, clinical practitioners, trainees, patients, and community leaders on Vancouver Island, as well as other national and international experts on the topic. Specifically, the primary goal of this application is to apply a patient-oriented approach to identify key knowledge gaps and establish a research network capable of investigating these issues and translating the findings into meaningful clinical outcomes.
Team members: Aimee Falkenberg (Island Health); Kix Citton (Nanaimo Brain Injury Association); Uta Sbotofrankenstein (BC SUPPORT); Jodie Gawryluk (University of Victoria); Paul Van Donkelaar (UBC – Okanagan); Karen Mason (Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain Injury through Research); Taylor Snowden (University of Victoria); Justin Brand (Vancouver Island University); Naz Saadat (University of Victoria); Jackie Demmy (Island Health; nursing students; Vancouver Island University); Janet Hildebrand (Island Health); Sasha Dallaire (Island Health); Coral Taylor (Island Health); Janet Calnan (Island Health); Charlotte Breakey (Island Health); Carrie Esopenko (Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai); Cheryl Wellington (UBC); Stuart McDonald (Monash University); Josh Allen (Vancouver Island University).
In order to foster collaboration and co-development of research by researchers and research users throughout the research cycle, we plan to address one of BC’s health system priorities — the evaluation of the impact of peer support programs in BC — by engaging people with lived experience, opioid agonist therapy (OAT) providers and policymakers in workshops, focus groups, and key informant interviews to define feasible peer support models. Recruitment for these workshops will be facilitated by engagement with drug user advocacy groups such as the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), the Peer Engagement and Evaluation Project (PEEP), and the BC/Yukon Association of Drug War Survivors (BCYADWS). Workshops will be co-led by researchers and research users, to collaboratively define the ‘active ingredients’ of the proposed intervention, considering elements of cultural safety and the extent of adaption necessary to suit client needs across the province.
Team members: Brittany Barker (First Nations Health Authority; BC Centre on Substance Use); Kirsten Ellingson (First Nations Health Authority); Keshia Cleaver (First Nations Health Authority); Nikhil Gandhi (First Nations Health Authority); Jolene Pagurut (First Nations Health Authority); Cheryl Tress (First Nations Health Authority); Alexa Norton (UBC); Kate Hodgson (First Nations Health Authority); Sue MacDonald (Vancouver Coastal Health); Jane Buxton (BC Centres for Disease Control; University of British Columbia); Laura Dale (Centre for Health Outcomes and Evaluation Sciences); Mo Korchinsky (First Nations Health Authority); Micah Piske (Centre for Health Outcomes and Evaluation Sciences); Reija Roberts (BC Association of People on Methadone); Amy Salmon (Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences); Amanda Slaunwhite (BC Centres for Disease Control; School of Population and Public Health; UBC).
The sustainability of healthcare in BC hinges on innovation and technology to improve health, well-being, and independence while keeping people out of hospital. To make useful technologies we must know where they are needed, how well they work, and how to fit technology into our healthcare system. No one has all the answers. We need to bring together patients and their families, health professionals, industry leaders, engineers, researchers, and hospital administrators to identify health technology priorities and opportunities, and map a plan to move forward. We will host five workshops — one for each participant group to identify priorities, opportunities and challenges. Each workshop will result in a white paper summarizing the priorities of the group. A final co-creation workshop will include all participant groups to identify research priorities, build new patient-centered research teams, and define a pathway for these priority projects to move forward.
Team members: Andrew Sixsmith (Simon Fraser University); Sylvain Moreno (Simon Fraser University); Faranak Farzan (Simon Fraser University); Jaimie Borisoff (British Columbia Institute of Technology); Teresa Cheung (Fraser Health); Lillian Hung (University of British Columbia); Kate Keetch (Fraser Health); Chris Condin (Fraser Health); Fatemeh Khorami (Simon Fraser University); Randy McIntosh (Simon Fraser University); Swapnil Shah (BC SUPPORT Unit); Brittney Schichter (BC SUPPORT Unit); Elicia Maine (Simon Fraser University); Tania Bubela (Simon Fraser University); Mei Fang (Simon Fraser University); Delia Cooper (BC SUPPORT Unit); Clay Braziller (Simon Fraser University).
In 2021, the BC experienced 196 fatal/non-fatal reported overdoses in youth under the age of 19, and 18 lost their lives. Despite the increasing number of youth with substance use disorders in BC, current data shows that voluntary, community-based, and youth-friendly support services are lacking. The Understanding Pathways project aims to address this by learning from youth who have had their lives impacted by substance use, what their diverse hopes, wishes and ideas are for accessible, non-judgmental, safe, and culturally-centered substance use services. The project will engage with youth as co-researchers and collaborate with frontline, community-based, policy, and academic researchers and research users in the field of youth substance use. We will convene with two youth advisory councils to plan and deliver a workshop where we will develop a journey map illustrating the continuum of substance use services required to meet the diverse needs of youth. We will compliment this with a scoping review of youth substance use interventions and promising practices. The journey map and scoping findings will be linked in a research brief to inform future research and knowledge translation activities.
Team members: Andrea Mellor (University of Victoria – Canadian Institutes for Substance Use Research); Denise Cloutier (University of Victoria – Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health); Jenna Bailey (Surrounded by Cedar Child and Family Services); Jennifer Chuckry (Surrounded by Cedar Child and Family Services); Glenys Webster (BC Representative for Children and Youth); Barbara Thompson (Victoria Youth Clinic Society); Zahra Premji (University of Victoria).
Twelve percent of all dental antibiotic prescriptions in BC are for clindamycin, a drug with considerable risk of adverse effects compared with alternatives. Good dental outcomes are achieved with much lower use of that drug in Australia (5 percent), and the UK (0.5 percent). Prescribing clindamycin endangers patient safety due to higher rates of Clostridium difficile infections, increases the risk of resistance, and should only be used when no better option is available. Audit and feedback interventions have decreased antibiotic prescribing rates in various settings, but experience with its use in dental prescribing is limited. Further, there is growing evidence that strategies informed by behavioral theory may be more effective and should be explored. Focus groups will provide an understanding of the current challenges in dental prescribing and test the responses on audit and feedback as well as the planned and alternative behavioral interventions. This would enable tailoring the audit and feedback according to the dentists’ needs making the intervention more relevant to the receivers and more effective.
Team members: Sade Stenlund (BCCDC); Fawziah Lalji (UBC – Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences); Clifford Pau (UBC – Faculty of Dentistry); Mamun Abdullah (BCCDC); Nick Smith (BCCDC); Max Xie (BCCDC); Lynsey Hamilton (BCCDC); Kirstin Appelt (Sauder School of Business); Dana Stanley (UBC – Therapeutics Initiative); Anat Fisher (UBC Therapeutics Initiative); Sophie Y. Wang (University of Hamburg).
Building Roads Together (BRT) is an intergenerational trauma-informed peer-led walking/rolling group program implemented in public urban greenspace, that trains and mentors migrants living in low-income urban neighbourhoods to promote social inclusion, equitable healthy aging, and mental health in their communities. Our Building Roads Together-Global (BRT-G) Solutions Network is adapting, scaling, evaluating, and sustaining BRT in three cities (Surrey, BC; Toronto, ON; Bogota, Colombia). This C2 award is to establish a Victoria site team for our Building Roads Together-Global Solutions Network to adapt, scale, evaluate, and sustain Building Roads Together in low-income, migrant-receiving neighbourhoods in Victoria. We will: 1) Build a new community-university-health system partnership in Victoria; 2) Develop a research agenda to integrate Victoria community partner priorities into BRT-G Solutions Network research objectives; 3) Begin the installation phase of implementing BRT in a low-income, migrant-receiving neighbourhood in Victoria; 4) Co-develop a training strategy for career development in inclusive implementation science; and 5) Build inclusive implementation science capacity among trainees.
Team members: Paola Ardiles (Bridge for Health); Nancy Clark (University of Victoria – School of Nursing, Faculty of Human and Social Development); Fiona Stevenson (DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society); Florentien Verhage (Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria); Sureya Ibrahim (Centre of Learning & Development); Adriana Diaz del Castillo H. (Ensamble Investigaciones).
