Faculty of Health and Social Development conducts multiple research projects

Gordon Binsted, acting dean, Faculty of Health and Social Development

Universities are places of learning and discovery, and that drive for knowledge has produced countless breakthroughs. Numerous health research projects underway at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus have the potential to lead to major advances that will benefit the public.

Gordon Binsted is the acting dean of the Faculty of Health and Social Development, which includes the Schools of Nursing, Social Work and Health and Exercise Sciences – all areas where research is being conducted with the goal of helping people live healthy lives.

“Universities have a number of different roles when it comes to research,” says Binsted, adding the first role is the creation of new knowledge.

Universities do not simply teach what others have learned, but actively seek new information which is then directly passed on to students, making their learning experience as current as possible.

“That’s at the heart of any university,” says Binsted. “The core of research is the discovery and application of knowledge.”

That application can be found in the community, which ultimately benefits from the discoveries made by university research.

“Research is a lot of baby steps, but without those you will never have the big breakthrough. Our job is to keep taking those steps,” says Binsted, noting the next baby step could be the one to change the world, or it could add another piece to the puzzle. But neither would happen if that first step is not taken.

Paul van Donkelaar, associate professor and acting director of the School of Health and Exercise Sciences, is one of many professors and students actively involved in a variety of research projects.

Paul van Donkelaar, associate professor and acting director of the School of Health and Exercise Sciences, says there is no shortage of areas that require academic investigation.

Van Donkelaar, who took over as acting director in July 2011, says his school is actively researching transitions in health care for the elderly, how exercise impacts chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, how the brain functions in low oxygen situations, and a variety of other projects with potential to improve people’s health.

“With a fairly quick turnaround, we can get the resulting information into the hands of people who are seeing patients,” says van Donkelaar, adding that a lot of the research investigates how to prevent disease in the first place.

Patricia Marck, director, School of Nursing

Also new to campus is Patricia Marck, who took over as the director of the School of Nursing last fall.

Marck says she is excited about research partnerships with the BC Ministry of Health, Interior Health, and several Okanagan communities in community, rural and global health.

There are new projects in Aboriginal and Metis health and in primary care, as well as continuing strategies to reduce tobacco use, provide effective end-of-life care for rural British Columbians and partnerships with institutions in Africa.

“It is gratifying to see more and more of our researchers supported by provincial and national funding agencies,” says Marck. “But it is even more rewarding to see our faculty and students creatively use social media to promote tobacco reduction, collaborate with rural communities to improve palliative care, or work with the Zambian Ministry of Health to study patients’ experiences of hypertension treatment. These are research activities that make concrete contributions to improving health.”

Edward Taylor, director, School of Social Work

School of Social Work director Edward Taylor says research has always been important within the School of Social Work, but it has increasingly become a major component — and indeed an expectation — of what the school does.

Taylor says the School of Social Work is collaborating with the School of Nursing and psychology program to develop a mental-health centre at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

“There’s a partnership for developing a teaching, treatment and research clinic focused on mental disadvantages and major medical adjustment issues,” says Taylor, noting major research is also being developed in the area of immigrants, health disabilities, and child and family welfare.

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UBC Schools of Nursing and Health and Exercise Sciences join forces

Grade 5 Casorso Elementary student Anthony Kurkjian tests his flexibility in the Human Kinetics lab at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. The elementary students had the opportunity to add to their book lessons by getting some hands-on experience thanks to their teacher and the Schools of Nursing and Health and Exercise Sciences.

They take different approaches, but the goal is the same, so working together makes sense.

The School of Nursing and the School of Health and Exercise Sciences (HES) at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus both aim to help people live healthier lives and the two schools have formed a new partnership, benefiting both the respective programs and the public.

The schools are working together to educate the next generation about staying healthy.

Nikki Reiter, lab coordinator in HES, says it is important to make the link between health and exercise.

“Exercise is just as important as traditional medicine,” says Reiter. “Exercise is preventive medicine. I think people traditionally see nurses and doctors as the authority on health, but exercise must be brought in as well.”

Corinne Crockett, a clinical assistant with the School of Nursing, says UBC students from both areas of study were on hand to teach a group of visiting Casorso Elementary School Grade 5 students about their bodies and exercise.

“We’re really hoping to show them the body is an integrated group of systems,” says Crockett, adding if the children are taught how to take care of their health when they are young, they will continue healthy practices as they get older.

The School of Nursing’s human patient simulators give the students an introduction to how the body works.

“They listen to heart sounds and lung sounds – on themselves and our patient simulators,” says Crockett.

The Casorso Elementary students then headed to the Human Kinetics Lab where they went through a series of exercises.

“It’s giving the kids experience in exercise,” says Lisa Wong, a lab coordinator in HES. “It’s helping them to understand what it means.”

Certified personal trainers were on hand, adding their expertise to the lessons offered by nursing and human kinetics students.

“It’s not only medicine you need to be healthy,” says Reiter. “We want to show the kids you also need exercise. Most kids are in pretty good shape in Grade 5; we want to teach them how to stay in shape when they are older.”

For Casorso teacher Lisa Marques, bringing her class to campus was the perfect opportunity to add some hands-on experience to what they learn in the classroom.

“When things are put in context like this, the kids understand it more,” says Marques. “It gives them a better idea of how the body works.”

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Ricardo Scebba from Ricardo’s Mediterranean Kitchen was at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus to give some tips on healthy eating.

This November, the University of British Columbia’s Be Well at Work project held two Fall Food Tasting events at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

The Fall Food Tasting events included healthy cooking demonstrations, recipes and tastings to celebrate employees’ participation in Be Well at Work, a project in partnership with the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health and the Canadian Cancer Society British Columbia and Yukon, with funding from the Canadian Cancer Society.

The project focuses on decreasing employees’ cancer risk through increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, boosting physical activity and maintaining a healthy body weight.

Being healthy at work is more important than ever. In 2004, Health Canada reported that 67 per cent of adults spend more than 60 per cent of their time at the worksite. The workplace has become a key location to encourage healthy practices and to reduce cancer risk— 1/3 of cancer cases can be averted through appropriate diet, physical activity and weight control.

Carolyn Gotay is the project’s Principal Investigator. She is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, and she holds the Canadian Cancer Society Chair in Cancer Primary Prevention. “Unhealthy eating, inactivity and obesity are leading causes of cancer, but these factors are preventable,” Gotay comments. “By promoting healthy behaviour at work, we will help people reverse their cancer risks.”

Be Well at Work program participants were invited to the Fall Food Tasting events. On November 17, UBC employees took part in a healthy snacks workshop with Health and Exercise Sciences Instructor Sally Willis-Stewart and registered dietician Casey Hamilton, followed by recipes and samples. On November 25th, local chef Ricardo Scebba from Ricardo’s Mediterranean Kitchen demonstrated his approach to healthy cooking and provided samples to participants. After completing the program questionnaire, all Be Well at Work participants will be eligible to win a fifty dollar gift certificate to Ricardo’s Mediterranean Kitchen.

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Fourth-year nursing students have undertaken a project with the goal of providing clean and safe water to Chanshigu, a small village located in northern Ghana.

The students are fundraising to supply water filters to village locals that are also manufactured in northern Ghana. These filters will clean the water of harmful parasites, bacteria and diseases.

The only access to water for the village is from a communal pond, used by the villagers and livestock alike. Clean water is the first step in reducing the mortality rate, promote better health and prevent illness in the village.

To support this project, members of the campus community can make donations out to the Ghana Clean Water Project and mail to room FIN323 of the Fine Arts and Health Building at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

Tax receipts will be issued for donations over $20 if requested.

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Kelowna-Lake Country MLA Norm Letnick, right, chats with student Ashley Huber and instructor Lindsay Kennedy from Okanagan College’s nursing program. Students completing their first two years of nursing at Okanagan College can transfer to complete the final two years of the Bachelor of Science in Nursing at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

The first cohort of 26 nursing students at Okanagan College are on their way to completing the first half of the four-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing program offered at UBC’s Okanagan campus. The new program was announced Oct. 7, at the official opening of Okanagan College’s new, state-of-the-art health simulation lab.

Students who successfully complete all courses in years one and two at Okanagan College will be fully prepared to transfer with guaranteed admission into the BSN program to complete the final two years of the program on the UBC campus in Kelowna.

To find out more visit the Ministry of Advanced Education media release: http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2011AVED0036-001271.htm

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Gareth Jones, left, Jonathan Little, Mary Jung and Deanna Gibson will be speaking on obesity during a free symposium Sept. 30, 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Clinical Academic Campus Lecture Theatre, first floor, 2312 Pandosy St.

Numerous medical concerns for overweight people

It’s a growing problem with serious health implications and a panel of experts from University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus will be giving advice on how to tackle obesity.

Weighing In: Current Scientific Evidence and Community Perspectives on Obesity, will be a half-day symposium led by multiple experts from a variety of fields. It will showcase research initiatives to reduce adult obesity, highlight community experiences in addressing obesity and explore advances and challenges related to improving healthy living with obesity. It will also provide an opportunity to build community-based research partnerships on obesity.

“The health ramifications of obesity are serious and impact not only the obese person, but all of society due to the strain it puts on the health-care system. It is important the problem of obesity is addressed on a personal and community level,” says Dr. Joan Bottorff, Director Institute for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention, UBC’s Okanagan campus. “We have assembled an excellent group of experts who can provide valuable insight into the challenges of obesity.”

In addition to the panel of UBC experts — Gareth Jones, Jonathan Little, Mary Jung and Deanna Gibson — Jay Wortman, senior medical advisor with Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit Health Branch and Glen Cross, a participant on CBC’s documentary Village on a Diet will also be presenting.

The symposium will be held Sept. 30, 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Clinical Academic Campus Lecture Theatre, first floor, 2312 Pandosy St. Admission is free and participants can participate in person or by web cast. Go to http://www.ubc.ca/okanagan/ihlcdp to register for this event and for more information.

Obesity is a risk factor for many chronic illnesses, particularly heart diseases and diabetes. As one of the leading causes of preventable illness and death in Canada, obesity is an epidemic.

According to the Obesity in Canada report, a joint partnership between the Public Health Agency of Canada and Canadian Institute for Health Information, released in June 2011:

• Approximately one in four Canadian adults are obese, according to measured height and weight data from 2007-2009;
• In Canada, between 1981 and 2007-09, obesity rates roughly doubled among both males and females in most age groups in the adult and youth categories; and
• In British Columbia, the 2007-2008 self-reported obesity prevalence estimate for the Okanagan was 14.6 per cent – more than double of that in Richmond and Vancouver.

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University research associate taking unique approach to kicking the habit

Rebecca Haines-Saah

Rebecca Haines-Saah wants smokers to picture themselves kicking butt.

The research associate with iTAG (Investigating Tobacco and Gender) at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus specializes in gender and youth smoking research and has received a $125,000 grant from the Canadian Cancer Society for a campaign to help people stop smoking.

The project combines participant-driven photography (PDP) with social media to form an innovative smoking cessation support and online community for young adult women and men. PDP methods put cameras in the hands of participants and ask them to represent their experiences by taking pictures. Using popular photo-sharing social media platforms such as facebook.com and flickr.com, participants will upload, caption and share pictures about their experiences with quitting guided by the theme – What does smoke free life look like to me?

“I am really excited about this project and I think it says a lot about the innovation of the Canadian Cancer Society that they are providing funds for tobacco prevention work using social media,” says Haines-Saah. “In previous photography projects we’ve done with smokers, we see that people – especially younger people – create images that are strikingly different from the ones we usually see in tobacco control campaigns. Because smoking is something that is now very much seen as socially acceptable to most people in the mainstream, it makes it really important to access the smoker’s point of view, so that we make sure we design cessation programs and messages that better support people that may want to quit.

“A lot of time and money is spent designing public health messages and imagery that will motivate or ‘scare’ people into quitting smoking. Our project is very different because it asks young adult smokers to use photography as a tool to step back and to reflect on why they smoke – and why it may be hard for them to stop.”

Built-in features of the social media sites allow users to comment on each other’s photos, creating a space for dialogue, debate and online support.

The Picture Me, Smokefree program is specifically geared toward young adult smokers. In Canada, young adults have been identified as a priority population for smoking cessation, with rates of tobacco use highest among those aged 18-24 when compared to all other population groups.

Currently, much of the tobacco prevention is directed towards children and adolescents, comparatively less is known about how to tailor cessation interventions and messaging to younger adults. Building on recent advances in health promotion and tobacco control campaigns that employ social media and web-based interventions, the research aims to address this important gap in order to encourage cessation among young adult women and men.

Haines-Saah can be reached at Picture.Me.Smokefree@gmail.com.

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Quick action by staff at Black Mountain Golf Course is credited with saving the life of a man having a heart attack last Friday.

Kelowna’s Castanet newsroom reports that, with emergency responders on the way, golf course manager Eric Thorsteinson ran to call in third-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing student Michelle Leydier, who works as a server in the food and beverage area. The news report noted that Leydier was able to resuscitate and stabilize the man.

For full details read the Castanet news story: www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/62312/Golf-club-heroes-save-life

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Four UBC researchers have teamed up to investigate the experiences and support needs of family caregivers to people with dementia.

The researchers — Carole Robinson, Associate Professor of Nursing, Meredith Lilly, Faculty Associate at the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, Susan Holtzman, Assistant Professor of Psychology,  and Professor Joan Bottorff, Director of the Institute for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention — hope their research will influence the strategic planning currently underway to address the burgeoning needs of persons with dementia and their family caregivers.

“After more than a decade of concerted effort by policy-makers in Canada and elsewhere to encourage older adults to age at home, there is recognition that the aging-in-place movement has had unintended negative consequences for family members who care for these seniors,” says Lilly.

“Unfortunately, the Canadian home care policy environment has placed caregivers in more desperate circumstances. It prevents caregivers from successfully addressing their health and wellness needs by embedding incentives to declare burnout as their only means of receiving assistance.”

As part of the research initiative, focus groups were conducted in 2010 with 23 caregivers, and the health professionals who support caregivers in three BC Southern Interior communities.

Two major themes emerged from the analysis of the focus group research:

• Caregivers are often abandoned to care alone for their loved ones and they receive very little recognition or the adequate services required to support their caregiving.
• Unrealistic expectations for caregivers to look after their own health while in the midst of intense caregiving for a loved one, which adds to the burden they experience.

“A fundamental reorientation toward caregivers and caregiver supports is necessary, beginning with viewing caregivers as a critical-health human resource in a system that depends on their contributions in order to function,” says Robinson. “This reorientation can create a space for providing caregivers with preventive supports, rather than resorting to costly patient care for caregivers who have reached the point of burnout and care recipients who have been institutionalized.”

As a next step, the research team is awaiting funding for a project designed to support couples where one person has early stage dementia. The aim of this project is to nurture the couple relationship in a way that supports the health and well-being of both the caregiver and the spouse with dementia.

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Barbara Pesut, Canada Research Chair in Health, Ethics and Diversity.

Barbara Pesut, assistant professor of nursing at UBC’s Okanagan campus, has been named Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Health, Ethics and Diversity.

One-fifth of Canada’s population resides in rural areas where access to healthcare services is limited. Pesut’s research involves developing treatment approaches for quality end-of-life healthcare, specifically for people who are at risk for health disparities due to geographic, cultural, or social differences.

One of 15 new Canada Research Chairs at UBC, Pesut is among 310 new research chairs named across Canada in celebration of the national research program’s 10th anniversary. As a Tier Two Canada Research Chair, Pesut will receive $500,000 over the next five years. The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has awarded Pesut $38,521 from its Leaders Opportunity Fund for research infrastructure associated with the new Canada Research Chair award.

Pesut is part of a research team at UBC’s Okanagan campus focused on helping families provide care for their loved ones at end-of-life. Interviewing family members in rural and remote communities to better understand their experiences and needs, the team is also helping to build rural capacity for end-of-life care by working with hospice palliative care societies from throughout the B.C. Interior. These societies play an important role in supporting family care providers.

The team engages community members in the research, recognizing that the wealth of local experience is key to helping identify priorities for palliative care research that will make a real difference to families.

In addition, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has funded an ethnographic study exploring end-of-life care in four rural communities in the Interior and Northern regions of B.C. Led by Pesut with co-investigators Carole Robinson and Joan Bottorff — both professors of nursing at the Okanagan campus — that research team has spent more than 50 days in the communities and interviewed 95 individuals involved in end-of-life care.

This has enabled researchers to better understand high-quality end-of-life care from rural individual’s perspective and the factors that enhance or inhibit that care. This understanding will form the basis for innovative strategies to build rural capacity for end-of-life care.

Pesut joins two other current Canada Research Chairs at UBC’s Okanagan campus: mathematics professor Heinz Bauschke, CRC in Convex Analysis and Optimization, and biochemistry professor Susan Murch, CRC in Natural Products Chemistry.

“UBC has an international reputation for excellence in research,” says Alaa Abd-El-Aziz, Provost and Principal at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “We are extremely proud of our Canada Research Chairs, and congratulate Professor Pesut on being named to this esteemed group of Canada’s leading researchers.”

For the past decade, the Canada Research Chairs program has played an instrumental role in ensuring that Canadian universities remain competitive in the recruitment and retention of the brightest minds in the world, says John Hepburn, Vice President Research and International at UBC.

“The program’s positive impact on the generation of new knowledge – and the knowledge-driven economy – cannot be overstated.”

For more information on the Canada Research Chair program and the new chairs, visit http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/.

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