Program: Reach Awards

One in 10 reproductive-aged women have endometriosis (where endometrial cells abnormally grow outside the uterus). This can lead to menstrual cramps and pain during bowel movements, pelvic movements, and vaginal penetration. This project focuses on deep penetration pain during sexual activity, which profoundly affects relationships and the sexual quality of life of women with endometriosis.

The interdisciplinary team at the BC Women’s Centre for Pelvic Pain and Endometriosis uses surgical-medical treatments, cognitive behavioural and mindfulness based therapies, and physiotherapy to treat women with endometriosis and sexual pain. The centre also has an active CIHR-funded clinical and translational research program, with a focus on sexual pain. Endometriosis-associated sexual pain may be due to endometriosis lesions and/or central nervous system sensitization and treatment efficacy may depend on the specific cause of the pain. The concept that pain may be due to central nervous system changes, and not directly to the endometriosis, may be difficult for some patients to understand. Therefore, there will be a one-day workshop explaining the multifactorial causes of sexual pain and patients will be provided with tools to manage their pain. The aim is to include women from the centre and women from the community along with their partners. This workshop will be created in collaboration with patient partners from start to finish, ensuring the learning objectives are patient-informed and the event is appropriate for the target audience.

The goals of this project are to:

1. Develop a one-day workshop targeted to patients with endometriosis and their partners.
2. Measure the impact of the workshop on patient understanding by using a short self-reported questionnaire created with patient partners.

The long-term goal is to effectively translate research findings on central nervous sensitization to patients with endometriosis so they gain a better understanding of the causes of their sexual pain.

• Primary audience: women (patients).
• Secondary audience members: patient partners/families, hospital foundation, researchers, physicians.

Community Health Representatives (CHRs) are the contacts between community members and health care practitioners in BC’s Indigenous communities. CHRs play an important role in the health care system for Indigenous health; they provide cultural support and health education within these communities.

Improving lifestyle behaviours is an effective way to reduce the burden caused by obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and conditions that affect mental wellbeing within Indigenous peoples. However, there is limited accessibility to effective, culturally appropriate, Indigenous-led and community-based health and wellness resources for CHRs. Therefore, this project will create a resource toolkit for CHRs in BC’s rural Indigenous communities, which is Indigenous-led and integrates and respects the language, culture, and traditions of Indigenous communities.

The toolkit will be developed through co-creation activities with CHRs and Indigenous communities in partnership with Indigenous Studies in Kinesiology (School of Kinesiology, UBC) and the Indigenous Physical Activity and Cultural Circle.

BC is facing a public health emergency due to the high number of overdose deaths. In 2017 alone, over 1,448 people died from drug overdose.

• According to BC Coroner’s services, 58 percent of overdose deaths occurred in private residences (e.g. garage, trailer homes) and 27 percent in other housing facilities (e.g. rooming house, hotel/motel, homeless shelter, single room occupancy (SRO), drug recovery house, halfway house, group home, senior residence). The number of deaths in these housing facilities have increased from 19 percent (2016) to 27 percent (2017).
• Coast Mental Health (CMH), which manages 37 housing facilities with approximately 4,000 residents across the Lower Mainland, have lost many residents due to overdose.

Staff at these facilities work closely with residents, creating an opportunity to provide support services. The UBC Addictions and Concurrent Disorders Group has partnered with CMH to facilitate implementation of evidence-based solutions within the housing facilities to prevent further overdose incidents. This partnership included gaining a better understanding, a clinical assessment of high-risk residents, and an opportunity to create a more appropriate service model.

Risk management of opioid overdose is complex and comes with risk factors spanning across health and social determinants of health. Communicating such complexities require knowledge exchange tools that engage and guide an individual through a logical pathway. This team will develop and distribute a 10-minute documentary that communicates the research evidence on the major risk factors of overdose fatalities and risk management strategies that housing facilities can implement.

The three major risk factors are unsupervised injection, concurrent disorders, and low opioid tolerance. This short documentary will be co-developed with CMH to engage housing providers through dynamic audiovisuals, narratives of those most affected by the overdose crisis, and animations. It will be distributed through a screening event and online channels (e.g. websites, YouTube, etc.). The knowledge acquired from this documentary will support non-profit housing organizations to integrate evidence-based risk management strategies into their practice to prevent further fatal and non-fatal overdose incidents.