Rates of food insecurity reached an all-time high in 2023, where over 21% of people in BC and almost 9 million Canadians, including 2.1 million children, now live without stable access to food. Our team has spent decades doing research that repeatedly finds that food insecurity is a symptom of poverty that must be addressed by better social policies. Health researchers (like us) naively thought that once we showed the evidence about the causes and solutions to food insecurity, it would change the hearts and minds of policy makers and the public. But research alone has not been enough. Our goal now is to bring together researchers, artists, health professionals and community members to come up with new ways to do research and evaluate its impact that includes making art, writing stories and testing research approaches that will get people talking about and sharing evidence about the causes of food insecurity and about what we can do to make sure no one ever goes hungry. This project will build new research skills among students, researchers and community partners, spark change in research approaches and bring communities and scholars together in new ways to better address the crisis of food insecurity in British Columbia.
Research Location: University of British Columbia - Vancouver Campus
Building a practice-based research learning community in British Columbia to strengthen learning health systems and health human resources
Ongoing challenges exist for attracting and keeping healthcare professionals in BC and across Canada due to low job satisfaction and working conditions. Professional development opportunities such as practice-based research (PBR) programs offer a solution to these challenges, as they have been shown to increase job satisfaction and retention of clinicians who work at point-of-care and see opportunities for practice and health system improvement. PBR programs provide training, mentorship, and funding to enable healthcare professionals to conduct small research projects that can lead to better patient experience and outcomes. However, more research is needed on the impact of PBR programs as they are not offered in all BC health authorities and there are continued threats (e.g., fiscal constraints, capacity limits) to sustaining existing PBR programs. Our convening and collaborating activities will bring together leaders, clinicians and people with lived experience in the healthcare system, creating a network that will formulate plans for evaluating, spreading and sustaining PBR programs, for the benefit of patients, clinicians and the healthcare system.
Working Together: Co-development of a person-centred approach to medical-dental integration in a Community Health Center serving structurally vulnerable women and children
Medical-dental integration (MDI) is regarded as a crucial strategy for achieving improved health outcomes, patient and provider experience, and cost savings. Despite its potential benefits, there is currently limited practical guidance available for implementing MDI effectively, and key stakeholders’ (patients;healthcare providers) perspectives of such integration are not well understood. Our project aims to support meaningful collaboration and knowledge exchange between health researchers, research users, and key stakeholders to co-develop a person-centred approach to MDI within an interdisciplinary community health centre (CHC). We will bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to identify the vision of medical and dental integration at the CHC, the activities needed to achieve this vision, and indicators to evaluate success. The convening and collaborating activities will include the formation of a Stakeholder Implementation Advisory Group (SIAG), ongoing meetings between researchers and SIAG participants, and interviews with key stakeholders at the CHC. Our goal is to elevate community voices and knowledge to inform the development of person-centred MDI at the EFry CHC that meets the needs of clients.
Help BC Hear Better: Identifying gaps in knowledge and setting our research agenda
Approximately 1 in 5 Canadians aged 20 to 79 has hearing loss that affects their ability to hear speech. Left unmanaged, hearing loss can contribute to social withdrawal, loneliness, decreased mental and physical health, and increased risk of hospital readmission. The burden of hearing loss increases with age, rising to 65% in adults over 70 years old. Despite how common hearing loss is, there are many barriers to accessing hearing healthcare. Barriers at the individual level (e.g., hearing aid appearance, minimal perceived benefit) have been well researched, while social and systemic barriers (e.g., policy gaps in hearing aid funding; inequitable access) have received relatively less attention. This project will explore the feasibility of funding hearing healthcare for seniors aged 60+ in BC. This grant will fund two activities: a data scan and a workshop. The data scan will identify existing published and unpublished data on hearing loss prevalence, individual and societal impacts of unmanaged hearing loss, and economic models of hearing health funding programs. The workshop will bring together stakeholders to discuss the existing data, plan for how to fill in gaps, and start a conversation about advocacy messaging.
Estimating the economic impacts of extreme weather events on healthcare systems: A qualitative inquiry to inform the development of an evaluation framework.
The health sector is uniquely vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather events driven by climate change, experiencing impacts like increased healthcare demand and disruption to healthcare infrastructure. There is a notable gap in comprehensive methods for estimating their economic impacts on the health system. This project seeks to address this gap by developing an approach to estimate the economic impacts of extreme weather events on the health system. The project will involve three steps, 1. A review of the literature, 2. Consultation with researchers and knowledge users, 3. Piloting of the framework on a case study.
We are seeking funding for the second step of this work. Focus groups will be conducted with health economists, they will be presented case studies of extreme weather events and asked questions on approaches to costing these events with the aim of gaining insights into ways to design methods to address the complexities of extreme weather events. Additionally, interviews will be conducted with policy makers and planners to explore the kinds of health economic evidence they need to support climate resilience planning in the health system. The results will be synthesized to develop a gold-standard approach.
Enhancing Well-Being in the North: Co-Developing a Community-Based Participatory Action Research Strategy to support mental health & redress health inequities with precariously housed people in BC
This grant will support research planning with community health and social service providers and men, women and gender diverse people living at the margins of poverty, precarious housing and poor mental health in rural and remote northern BC. We will build relationships with both provider and people with lived experience (Research Users) through World Cafés, and the inclusion of Research Users in all activities. Guided by community-based, participatory approaches, we will: (i) conduct a literature synthesis on mental health promotion and housing strategies with a focus on remote communities; (ii) conduct a synthesis of recent community-led consultations with Research Users on the strengths and challenges of mental health care and housing support in their region; (iii) undertake 2 inclusive World Cafés with Research Users to share outcomes of the literature synthesis and consultations and generate key research priorities necessary to support optimal mental health and housing security. Collaboratively, we will plan and develop a CIHR grant application to support subsequent research to co-develop an intervention that simultaneously enhances mental health care and housing security for people precariously housed in rural and remote BC.
Modernizing brain injury services in British Columbia: Developing research priorities for children, youth, and young adults
Acquired brain injury is a pressing and under addressed issue in Canada, especially in children and youth. These brain injuries can lead to an array of health outcomes, including issues with physical, cognitive, mental, and emotional health. Given the vast impacts of brain injury, children and youth access services in a variety of settings, including acute care, rehabilitation, and community settings. Despite the extensive personal and societal burden of a pediatric brain injury, research relevant to children, youth, and those transitioning to adulthood is limited across hospital, rehabilitation, and community services for these groups during their injury. This proposed multisectoral engagement project brings together researchers, clinicians, community organizations, not-for-profit groups, and partners with lived experienced in acquired brain. These individuals interact with acquired brain injury in acute care, rehabilitation, and community settings. This project will identify key research priorities on health and care services for children, youth, and those transitioning to adult services with acquired brain injury in B.C.
Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare: Global, multidisciplinary mobilization toward low-carbon, sustainable, and resilient health systems transformation
The Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare (LCSH) is an expert collaborative of academics, ministries of health, and sustainable healthcare program leaders tackling issues of appropriate consumption and environmental emissions from healthcare activities to define best practices for low-carbon, sustainable, and resilient care. The LCSH works to develop evidence-based guidance and standardized indicators, informing implementation policies across diverse resource settings and engaging diverse stakeholders, including policy makers, industry leaders, healthcare administrators, health professionals, educators, and the population at large. Following the 2025 launch of our original work in the Lancet, the LCSH will disseminate report outputs through a social media campaign, at major global events, and via a speaking tour, with a focus on strategically-designed toolkits adapting our empirical evidence to guide implementation in real-world healthcare environments. Our work will form the basis of a new division of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, allowing annual monitoring and reporting of relevant metrics toward sustainable health systems transformation.
Women’s Insights Shared and Empowered (WISE): Amplifying the Voices of Asian Women with Endometriosis
Endometriosis affects approximately 2 million people in Canada. Despite the high prevalence of this condition, a lack of awareness, normalization of painful and debilitating symptoms, and ongoing medical discrimination remain. Racialized communities, including Asian populations, face additional barriers to diagnosis and care. Asian individuals, compared to their White counterparts are more likely to have their endometriosis-related pain dismissed by healthcare providers and have a higher burden of disease before referral. We aim to share findings from our EndoPhoto research, utilizing images, text, and narratives from East, South, and Southeast Asian individuals to depict their experiences with endometriosis before, during, and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. Our research highlights mental health challenges, the complex symptom burden, healthcare access barriers, and coping strategies employed for self-care and seeking support. We plan to (1) develop an interactive website to showcase the EndoPhoto study findings, and (2) share the website via a social media campaign. Sharing this research will address a significant gap in knowledge around endometriosis experiences generally, and for Asian individuals specifically.
Collaborating with community organizations to mobilize knowledge on healthy(ier) aging to older adults across B.C.
Improving the health and wellbeing of older adults in British Columbia (B.C.), whether living free of, or with, chronic disease, is a major public health priority. This is because declines in health and well-being have significant individual, family, social, and economic impacts. There is evidence from research studies that certain environmental, social, and life style factors may promote health as we age. Yet, there remains a wide gap in sharing this information with older adults and their care partners, especially those who are geographically or socially harder to reach. Our goal is to use multiple strategies to share research evidence related to healthy aging with all older adults in B.C., and it starts with collaborating with organizations that serve them. Through these collaborations, we will co-create an online web resource to broadly share information. We will also host healthy aging public presentation sessions and start a podcast series to enable more in-depth sharing of information and direct interaction between older adults and researchers. By sharing information on healthy aging, we aim to promote health and well-being among older British Columbians, and bridge the gap between healthspan and lifespan.