SPPH researchers part of $43 million CIHR funding

Image credit: CIHR IPPH

University of British Columbia researchers, including School of Population and Public Health faculty, have been awarded $43m for 65 projects through Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Project Grants.

Professor Jane Buxton

Associate Professor Kimberlyn McGrail

The Fall 2017 Project Grants included four SPPH Principal Investigators (PIs): Professor Jane Buxton won a Project Grant for ‘Opioid Prescribing Evaluation and Research Activities (OPERA)’, which has the overall goal of assessing patterns of opioid prescription in BC in relation to serious outcomes such as dependence, illicit drug use, overdose, and death, and provide evidence for do-no-harm strategies to address BC’s prescription opioid crisis.

Associate Professor Kimberlyn McGrail was awarded a Project Grant for ‘Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage: Testing and Potential Implementation in Canada’, which will test, modify, re-test, evaluate and improve approaches to privacy preserving data linkage, with an overarching question of whether the methods can be appropriately adapted and scaled for use in real-world setting.

Professor Jean Shoveller won a Project Grant for ‘Women’s overdose risk environments and the response to the overdose crisis in Vancouver, Canada’, which aims to generate evidence to strengthen interventions and strategies to decrease overdose-related harms, including death, among women who use drugs through an examination of the socio-structural forces shaping overdose risk, women’s access to and experiences with overdose-related interventions, and the perspectives of drug-using women on potential strategies to improving overdose-related interventions and outcomes.

Assistant Professor Matilda van den Bosch was awarded a Project Grant for ‘Born to be Wise: Impact of Modifiable Early-life Environmental Exposures on the Health and Development of Children’, which has a primary goal of addressing the research gap between the effect of environmental exposures on early development, and the influence of interactions between harmful exposures and beneficial exposures, as well as studying relations between various environmental exposures and children’s early development and health.

Professor Jean Shoveller

Assistant Professor Matilda van den Bosch

Clinical Associate Professor Eleni Galanis was the co-PI for the Fall 2017 Project Grant winning project, ‘Beyond diarrhea, to disability and death: uncovering the hidden health consequences of foodborne infections.’ Dr. Galanis’ application was ranked first out of 66 reviewed grants, and 10 approved.

A number of SPPH faculty were co-investigators on Fall 2017 Project Grant winning projects, including Professor Karen Bartlett on ‘Bayis Il Tus – A Strong Breath: Community-Based Research to Identify the Prevalence of and Contributors to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in Remote and Rural First Nations Communities in British Columbia’, Professor Jean Shoveller and Associate Professor Chris Richardson for ‘What will it take to decrease the burden of the HIV and STI epidemics among MSM in British Columbia, Canada? A sexual network modeling analysis, combining syndemic theory, to evaluate the impact of behavioural and biomedical interventions for HIV and STI prevention’, Professor Patricia Janssen on ‘Giving Voice to Mothers; Measuring access to high quality, respectful maternity care in Canada’, and Professor David Patrick for ‘Beyond diarrhea, to disability and death: uncovering the hidden health consequences of foodborne infections.’

According to CIHR, the Project Grant: Fall 2017 competition approved 512 research grants, plus an additional 33 bridge grants, for a total investment of about $372 million.

In addition to the Fall 2017 Project Grants, Professor Jean Shoveller and doctoral alumnus Rod Knight’s project, ‘Addressing sexual- and drug-related HIV risk among young gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men’, received just under $2 million and Clinical Professor Mark Gilbert’s project, ‘Understanding contextual factors to effectively and equitably scale up GetCheckedOnline to diverse populations and geographic settings’ received $2 million as part of the HIV Implementation Science – Component 2 Grants announced in December.

Minister of Health Ginette Petitpas Taylor said in a December release the 84 funded research and community-based projects reflected the government’s renewed focus on supporting evidence-based prevention, reducing stigma and discrimination, and increasing access to testing and treatment for HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.

Professor Jane Buxton was the co-PI on two projects awarded CIHR Operating Grants, ‘Systematic review of naloxone interventions in opioid overdoses’ and ‘Scoping review to identify impact of legal approaches on opioid-related harms and mortality.’

Professor David Patrick was the co-investigator on a project awarded a CIHR Catalyst Grant, ‘Mapping Canadian Knowledge of, and Involvement in, the Global Governance of Anti-Microbial Resistance and Related Infectious Diseases.’

Congratulations to our faculty grant winners, and all other faculty involved!

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