Under normal healthy circumstances our intestines are home to hundreds of species of microbes, collectively termed the microbiota. Our intestines can also be colonized by parasites, such as parasitic worms (helminths). Both the microbiota and helminths can affect the functioning of our immune system, which in turn, can influence our susceptibility to a variety of infectious, allergic, and inflammatory diseases. Research in my laboratory is focused on understanding the mechanisms by which helminths and the microbiota affect immune system functioning during normal development and during states of disease.
The incidence of allergies and inflammatory bowel diseases has increased dramatically in Canada over recent decades, and there is an urgent need both to understand the factors driving disease development and to identify new treatment strategies. My laboratory uses the mouse model system where the molecular mechanisms of interaction between components of the immune system, the microbiota, and helminths can be identified. Understanding the mechanisms by which the microbiota and helminths can influence immune system functioning may reveal new ways to treat or prevent allergic and inflammatory diseases.
Childhood obesity is a major public health challenge in Canada. Without intervention, overweight children will likely continue to be overweight during adolescence and adulthood. Family-based lifestyle programs delivered at local communities can be effective. However, many families cannot attend these in-person programs due to travel distances and program availabilities. The current situation has turned increasingly dire in the COVID-19 landscape, where face-to-face, group, and facility-based interventions are no longer viable. With continued improvements in the sophistication and access to digital communication technology (e.g. Internet, wearables, smartphones), delivering tailored lifestyle programs using these tools may be well-suited to meet these challenges.
The goal of this project is to evaluate the long-term efficacy and the cost of delivering a stand-alone web-based and a blended in-person and web-based program in improving health-related outcomes in children who are overweight or obese in British Columbia (B.C), Canada. This project can be incredibly impactful for B.C. residents as this web-based program can improve the access, reach and personalization of family-based childhood obesity management programs.
Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on the planet. Many species use sophisticated sensory systems, including smell and taste, to locate human beings and other animal hosts in their environment as a source of blood. When they blood-feed, they can transmit microorganisms that cause human diseases including malaria and dengue fever. After converting a blood-meal into eggs, a female mosquito must find an appropriate body of water to lay eggs where her offspring will thrive. Selecting an egg-laying site is an important part of the mosquito lifecycle, since the juvenile larval and pupal stages are aquatic and cannot move from where they hatch. Mosquitoes do not fly far, and so their choice of breeding site strongly influences where they can be found as adults and thus, where they can transmit disease.
The goal of my research is to understand how mosquitoes use their sense of smell and taste to make decisions about who to bite and where to lay eggs. I use techniques to modify their DNA and to look at the activity in their brains under a microscope. Ultimately, this research will help us understand why some mosquitoes are more deadly than others and provide the basis for mosquito control strategies such as traps and repellents.
There are growing differences in health among population groups due to unfair social conditions that disadvantage some people more than others in British Columbia and beyond. Health systems play a role in holding this problem in place by presenting unnecessary barriers to accessing quality healthcare. Health systems also have a key role in closing these gaps by taking action to change the underlying conditions that shape health and wellbeing. The Population Health Approaches to Implementing Research (k)Nowledge for Equitable Systems & Strategies (PHAIRNESS) Research Program aims to make visible and intervene on systems-level problems in three connected systems: health systems, surveillance systems and research systems. By working closely with health systems, communities and people who are impacted by these issues, research findings will be relevant, useful, and ready to be rapidly applied to improve health systems and support the wellbeing of all people in British Columbia.
This Health System Impact Fellowship is co-funded by CIHR, Michael Smith Health Research BC, and the BC Office of the Provincial Health Officer (health system partner), to help build BC’s health policy research capacity for the integration of policy research into decision-making.
Reporting on the health and wellness of populations is vital to monitor trends, identify priorities, track progress towards targets, and address inequities. All Indigenous peoples — including those who do not have ‘Status’ under Canada’s Indian Act — have the right to be counted. Their perspectives and priorities must guide how data is collected, used, and reported. Yet, at present, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples who do not have ‘Status’ or are not registered with Metis Nation BC are ‘invisible’ and ‘uncounted’ within population health and wellness reporting in British Columbia (BC). Responsibility for reporting on health of BC residents lies with the Office of the Provincial Health Officer (OPHO). Through agreements with federal, provincial, and Indigenous governments, the OPHO’s responsibilities include collaboratively reporting on health and wellness of diverse Indigenous peoples living in the province. Currently, there is no process in place to report on health and wellness of “uncounted” Indigenous peoples. This work must be done in partnership with Indigenous collectives representing this population. Current gaps include:
- No strengths-based, self-determined terminology to refer to diverse Indigenous peoples who are uncounted in population health data.
- Lack of formal relationships with Indigenous collectives representing uncounted Indigenous peoples.
- No way of identifying this population in existing BC population health data.
- Absence of research frameworks that reflect uncounted Indigenous peoples’ perspectives of health and wellness.
- No implementation plan for province-wide population health reporting led by uncounted Indigenous peoples, on their terms .
The goal of this project is to support the health and wellness of uncounted Indigenous peoples living in BC by addressing current gaps in population health reporting, through partnerships that uphold Indigenous self-determination, decision-making, and perspectives of health and wellness.
Source: CIHR Funding Decisions Database
This Health System Impact Fellowship is co-funded by CIHR, Michael Smith Health Research BC, and the BC Centre for Disease Control (health system partner), to help build BC’s health policy research capacity for the integration of policy research into decision-making.
Health promotion (HP) enables people to increase control over health and reduce health inequities through action on the determinants of health. HP actions include developing personal skills, creating supportive environments, strengthening community action, building healthy public policy, and reorienting health services to improve population health and wellness.The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the need for more coordinated, integrated and intersectoral HP action. The focus and value-add of the project is the development of co-created (with research, policy, and practice stakeholders) recommendations for enhanced HP and the innovative application of a complex systems approach to support this work. Using physical activity as a starting point, this project will to map (inventory) HP initiatives targeting physical activity at the provincial, regional, and local levels and identify areas to enhance coordination and integration to build healthier communities. The anticipated impacts and value of achieving this goal include:
- Shared leadership, governance, and accountability for HP.
- Increased collaborative capacity to align HP.
- Enhanced focus among stakeholders on reducing health equities.
- Shared resources (human, financial, infrastructure) to implement HP.
- Improved information (knowledge exchange, research and evaluation, monitoring and surveillance).
- Shared learning and understanding among stakeholders of new approaches to HP identified through the lens of a complex systems paradigm.
There are three objectives:
- Describe and map existing physical activity HP initiatives and systems in BC.
- Assess systems to identify facilitating and hindering factors and key feedback mechanisms that influence implementation, coordination and integration.
- Strengthen systems through identification of priority leverage points and recommendations for more synergistic implementation of coordinated intersectoral HP in BC.
Source: CIHR Funding Decisions Database
This Health System Impact Fellowship is co-funded by CIHR, Michael Smith Health Research BC, and the First Nations Health Authority (health system partner), to help build BC’s health policy research capacity for the integration of policy research into decision-making.
Healing Indicators is a research project that aims to improve health assessment policy. It addresses the need to create tools that centre communities and Indigenous knowledge in the assessment of the health impacts of resource development. The project is grounded in community-based Indigenous methods, with the purpose of developing land-based wellness indicators. The work draws on self-determination, culture, kinship, community, and land to inform and define health and wellness in a First Nations context. As a research program, Healing Indicators is committed to engaging land-based healing and health justice and features a decolonial ‘two-eyed seeing’ approach, with one eye informed by Indigenous ways of knowing, and the other western science. Progressing land-based indicator research is important within the context of the First Nations Health Authority’s “Public Health and Wellness Agenda.” Land-based health indicator development requires emergent community-based methods and design that is inclusive of leadership from Indigenous peoples. The impact of this collaboration is the promotion of critical Indigenous health research, with opportunities to expand on policy gaps in relation to land-based wellness and Indigenous health assessment. Asset-based work, such as this, is relevant within the context of provincially acknowledged widespread racism within the health care system in British Columbia. This work is also significant to the provincial commitment to implement the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPA 2019). Healing Indicators is a collaborative research project designed to promote community-led health through land-based indicator development to inform self-determination and wellness in collaboration with the First Nations Health Authority.
Source: CIHR Funding Decisions Database
This Health System Impact Fellowship is co-funded by CIHR, Michael Smith Health Research BC, and BC Ministry of Health (health system partner), to help build BC’s health policy research capacity for the integration of policy research into decision-making.
In late 2020, the Government of British Columbia committed to a policy of free contraception for all. This first-in-Canada policy presents an opportunity to address the cost barrier that limits access to contraception, and to understand and address how other identity factors like race, ethnicity, religion, age, and ability intersect with gender to affect the experience of contraceptive access. The goal of this project is therefore to use a gender and diversity lens called Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) to support the planning, implementation and evaluation of free contraception policy and programs in BC. Specifically, a family planning researcher will work with the BC Ministry of Health to engage with stakeholders about the impact of free contraception on communities known to face various barriers to safe and appropriate contraception care. Stakeholder engagement will be complemented by reviews of the relevant scientific evidence as well as invited presentations from researchers doing work connected to gender, diversity, and contraception. In alignment with the Ministry mandate to provide free contraception for all and addressing systemic discrimination, the results will be shared with policy makers to inform decisions about free contraception policies and programs and will be used to inform templates and guidelines for future GBA+.
Source: CIHR Funding Decisions Database
