Year: 2019

BC research has examined the effects of supported housing on mental illness, addiction, crime, public safety, community integration, quality of life, and total public expenditure. Local and international studies show that increased spending does not necessarily result in significant improvement for people with complex needs, and that effective interventions require specific coordinated approaches to service delivery. At present, no central source of support exists to ensure that relevant research is available to inform practices in BC.

This project will convene provincial partners who are responsible for addressing homelessness, mental illness, and addiction, and identify priorities for cross-sector coordination, implementation of best practices, and evaluation. Identified priorities will be reviewed with additional provincial stakeholders (e.g., municipal government, community-based housing & health service providers, patients & family members). Priorities and recommendations will be finalized by the project team along with recommended next steps and made available to the public via SFU web-based media and communications.

 Results will inform a multi-year plan for applied research addressing housing and mental illness in BC. 

 Patient care today relies heavily on patients and caregivers coordinating their own records, leading to difficulties building comprehensive and accurate health records. Digitizing the patient journey, from using electronic records to tracking patients' health with portable sensors, are now conceivable to curate and accurately record health information and improve self-management. To begin transforming healthcare using technology-enabled healthcare approaches, commonly referred to as virtual or digital health, we need rigorous interdisciplinary research.

Virtual Innovative health Strategies through Interdisciplinary co-Operative Network (VISION) aims to advance research to develop and evaluate virtual and digital interventions in healthcare. With experienced faculty members, trainees, and research users (eg. patients, caregivers, policy makers, healthcare professionals, industry) from health, social, and natural sciences, together we can work to digitize healthcare.

Through this MSFHR grant, we will bring VISION members and experts outside of BC together to explore key areas of interdisciplinary research in digital health and convene a patient and caregiver advisory committee to guide our patient-oriented research path forward. 

After the age of 70, about 10% of British Columbians will develop a heart valve disease called aortic ('a-yor-tic') stenosis. Over time, the leaflets of the heart valve become harder and blood cannot pass through easily to travel to the rest of the body. This is like having a garden hose with a spout that cannot be loosened. The only treatment is to replace the valve. If this is not done, most people with the worse aortic stenosis will die within a year.

As of recently, this valve replacement can be done in one of two ways: either with open heart surgery (surgical aortic valve replacement) or using a small hollow plastic tube threaded through a leg artery or another way (transcatheter aortic valve replacement). Both ways have different risks and benefits, and many patients can have one way to the other.

The reason our group of clinicians, researchers and patients want to come together is to help patients and their doctors and other health care professionals decide about the way to change the valve together that is the right one for each patient. It is also important that this decision matches the patient's values and beliefs about their health and their goals. This is called shared decision-making.

Our goals are to look about what we know about the treatment of aortic stenosis and shared decision-making and study how we can use this information to improve the care of older British Columbians and Canadians who need valve surgery.  

Women are more susceptible to certain brain disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer's disease compared to men. Moreover, disease manifestation is different between the sexes. Yet, most research focuses primarily on males, which has contributed to the current knowledge gap and inequities in practice. Although new work has focussed on how biological sex alters disease trajectory and outcome, less is known about how the unique physiological and social challenges experienced by women influence brain health. What we do know is striking. For example, the physiological changes during pregnancy and postpartum alter susceptibility to brain disease, and barriers to access care can significantly affect the timing and accuracy of diagnoses in women.

This highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of women's physiological and social challenges that are unique to women to improve health outcomes. Yet, most research has focussed primarily on males which has contributed enormously to the current knowledge gap and inequities in practice.

We will host a one-day Women's Health Conference to bring together multidisciplinary researchers and stakeholders to:

1. engage in dialogue related to women's brain health issues,
2. foster new collaborations, and
3. establish a provincial Women's Brain Health Network that will build new research programs and offer essential student training in order to reduce knowledge gaps and inequities in accessing care. 

In Canada, approximately 8000 young adults (aged 18 to 39) are diagnosed with cancer each year, representing 4% of cancer diagnoses annually. Currently, cancer care systems have limited capacity to meet the complex needs of young adults with cancer and young adult cancer care is generally underrepresented in cancer education and research. However, research indicates that young adults with cancer have a clear understanding of how their care could be improved and want to play an active role in doing so.

This C2 grant would support 20 young adults with cancer and 20 cancer care allies (health care professionals, decision-makers, researchers, and community organizations) in BC to come together for a two-day meeting to share experiences of young adult cancer care and to identify key research and practice priorities to improve young adult cancer care in BC.

Key outcomes include:

1. strengthened relationships and partnerships between young adults and cancer care allies;
2. identification of key research and practice priorities to improve young adult cancer care in BC; and
3. the co-creation of a high-quality report and two knowledge products to share learnings and priorities widely.    

Reablement is a short-term intensive interdisciplinary approach to providing health care at home, with a focus on older adults post-hospitalization. Reablement emphasizes a person's autonomy and independence, but the model may pose implementation challenges within a team-based setting. To mitigate these factors requires a consistent training program (for fidelity) to adopt the concept of reablement, and develop skills and knowledge. To create an acceptable, feasible, and effective knowledge strategy requires co-designing the curriculum with the end users.

This study, grounded in behaviour change theory, is designed to work with frontline clinicians and researchers, to create a blended curriculum of online training, video scenarios, and group-based work. We will work within our established clinical academic partnership, to develop the curriculum over 12 months via a series of monthly webinars from experts in the clinical and research fields on topics related to delivering reablement. During the webinars, a facilitator will synthesize information on ways to strengthen team-based practice, maintain fidelity to the model, and support older adults' autonomy and independence.

We anticipate the following outcomes from this collaboration: a co-created curriculum of reablement, a consensus statement on behavior change strategies for reablement, KT capacity building for trainees, peer-reviewed publications, and a research agenda for next steps to advance reablement in BC.   

POR describes the process of involving patients and their caregivers in research, not just as participants but also as collaborators and partners. In response to this, there has been increasing calls for patients to receive compensation for their contributions. However, compensation practices and sources of financial support are varied. Increasing numbers of patients and patient organizations are receiving financial support through industry or pharmaceutical organizations, as well as non-profit advocacy groups.  While this has opened up new opportunities for patients to be involved in research, it is unclear how potential conflicts of interest are understood and managed.

Our project seeks to critically explore the compensation of patients in POR and to gain insights into how conflicts of interest are, and could be, managed. We will first host a facilitated live chat on Twitter to gather a range of perspectives from patients and stakeholders. We will analyze this data and will use this to plan and deliver a one-day consultation meeting. We will invite key stakeholders from across British Columbia, including patients, researchers and others, to share their experiences and identify key research questions, gaps and priorities.