Michael Smith Health Research – BC Scholars program funding allows focus on research

Jean Buckler

Jean Buckler, an assistant professor in the School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education, says that having the time to foster community relationships will help catalyze partnered work.

“Physical literacy brings together movement skills like throwing, catching and balance and psychological constructs including motivation and confidence. Everyone’s journey to activity is different,” she says.

Using a community-informed approach—which requires long-term stable relationships that need to be nurtured—Buckler will develop a fuller understanding of the interplay between physical literacy and physical activity to improve our understanding of access to and participation in physical activity for equity-deserving populations. 

She expects the research will inform policy changes to create physical activity programs that are relevant, engage communities, and support population-level participation in movement that promotes health.

“Physical activity has extensive physical and mental health benefits. Alongside this, it gives us a chance to be challenged, be successful and build confidence.” 

“Movement,” she says, “has the ability to bring joy to our lives.”

Lauren Davey

Lauren Davey, an assistant professor in microbiology, will use her Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholars award to advance “Harnessing the Gut Bacterium Akkermansia muciniphila for Probiotic Innovation and Healthy Aging.”

“The human gut is home to trillions of microbes that play a critical role in health and disease,” Davey explains. “My laboratory investigates the common bacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, which colonizes the intestinal mucus layer. While these bacteria offer benefits including improved metabolic health, they can also weaken the gut's protective mucus barrier, leading to inflammation.”

A major focus of her work is to use advanced genetic techniques to engineer bacteria, in particular A. muciniphila, as probiotics to promote healthy aging and longevity, and as innovative types of vaccines. Her team is also developing strategies to modulate mucus-degrading bacteria in the gut to combat graft-versus-host disease, a serious post-transplant condition.

The five-year funding award will help Davey to advance her comprehensive research program and knowledge transfer activities, including publications, public outreach and leveraging her industry connections for potential commercialization.

Jae-Yung Kwon

Jae-Yung Kwon’s Michael Smith Health Research – BC Scholar award will support his focus on “Tailoring health services by contextualizing the person behind patient-reported data” for the next five years.

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) play an increasing role in improving health outcomes. They provide information about patients’ perspectives of their care, including their physical, mental and social health. However, assistant nursing professor Jae-Yung Kwon explains, the data collected are merely numbers that do not provide a holistic assessment of a patient’s health.

So, Kwon is pioneering a new approach for contextualizing patient-reported data with patient stories. This will have the potential to ease patient-clinician dialogue and identify specific education and intervention strategies. The aim, he says, is to tailor health services to address the unique and evolving health needs of individuals.

“For PROs to achieve their full potential,” Kwon says, “we need context, details and insights into why a patient’s health is improving, deteriorating or remaining stable over time. The overall goal of my research program is to promote person-centred care. I want to understand the socio-demographic characteristics and circumstances of patients who experience differences in—or different perceptions of—health outcomes.”

Mariko Sakamoto

Assistant nursing professor Mariko Sakamoto’s Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar award will support “Co-Creating Age and Dementia-Friendly Communities: A Community-Engaged Program of Research.”

“It's a fantastic award and opportunity for someone like me who is still early career. I can really focus on developing my research program,” Sakamoto says.

Communities, organizations and policy makers recognize the need to make the community setting a place where people can “age in place” and experience quality of life even as they live with conditions such as dementia. Sakamoto’s community-engaged research program addresses this need by engaging directly with people with lived experience. Her goal is to build a Community Action Group (CAG) of people with dementia, and to conduct co-research with them to inform the development of age- and dementia-friendly communities.

Sakamoto also works closely with the Alzheimer Society of BC, which partnered with MSHR-BC on this funding.

Sarah Wright Cardinal

“Prior to the Indian Act and the Potlatch Ban,” Sarah Wright Cardinal says, “Indigenous Nations in Canada had complex and complete healthcare systems with intrinsic ties to the land and spirit-based understandings of the cosmos. Within these holistic systems, the individual, family, and community were cared for.”

Wright Cardinal, an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy, will use her five-year MSHR–BC Scholar award, “Sharing medicine bundles and pathways to community wellness: articulating nation-specific ceremonial, land-based wellness practices,” to enliven the concept of land as healer, reclaim ceremonial healthcare practices, and identify—and share—Nation-specific pathways to community wellness in contemporary contexts.

Through a series of interrelated research projects with several Nations, Wright Cardinal’s goal is to articulate how intergenerational knowledge transmission can be enhanced to advance community wellness and the revitalization of traditional health systems.

Ultimately, she intends that recommendations drawn from the research outcomes will inform the development of Nation-specific community wellness frameworks and present ways for Canadian healthcare systems to engage the role of traditional healing.