News

2024 Recap: Lungs on fire Initiative Funded by CIHR

🎉 Congratulations to our Director, Dr. Chris Carlsten [https://rb.gy/i56i8p], for receiving funding through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Team Grants in Lung Health! 🎉

📝 Project Title: Lungs on Fire: Wildfire Smoke, Incident Diseases, Susceptible Populations, and Community Values in Canada

➤ The team will focus on the long-term health effects of wildfire smoke and how exposure affects people differently based on age, sex, genetics, exercise habits, and socioeconomic status.

➤ Their findings will guide public health advice during wildfire emergencies to help keep people safe.

🔗 Read more: https://rb.gy/oi5l2g

Participate in Research: Wildfire Smoke and Health Recommendations: Understanding Community Values, Preferences, and Needs

During wildfire season, many people consider taking actions to protect their health from wildfire smoke. However, little is known about what factors people consider in their decision-making and whether current health recommendations adequately address these factors.

To help fill this knowledge gap, the research team is looking for people across British Columbia to participate in a 60- to 90-minute focus group or interview about health recommendations and decision-making around wildfire smoke.

👉 Interested in participating? Fill out our screening survey here: https://rb.gy/886gc6, and a team member will follow up!

📧 Questions? Please send them to Stephanie Harvard at stephanie.harvard@ubc.ca.

2024 Recap: VCH/PHC Smoking Cessation Workshop

With our support, the Centre for Lung Health hosted the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and Providence Health Care (PHC) Smoking Cessation workshop on May 13th, 2024. The goal was to gather valuable insights from health professionals, leaders, and individuals with lived experiences, paving the way for enhanced clinical smoking cessation services within VCH/PHC and the communities they serve.

💓 A heartfelt thank you to Elders Dehlia Nahanee and Curtis Ahenakew for gracing us with their wisdom and shedding light on the distinctions between traditional and commercial tobacco.

The workshop was attended by representatives from various partners, including:
🔹 Hope to Health (BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS)
🔹 First Nations and Aboriginal Primary Care Network
🔹 Louis Brier Home and Hospital
🔹 Quit Now
🔹 BC Lung Foundation
🔹 The University of British Columbia

Together, we are taking significant steps toward building healthier communities and empowering individuals on their journey towards a smoke-free life. We hope to continue this vital conversation and will update you all with our next steps soon!

Congratulating Dr. Kate Johnson!

🎉 Congratulations to LAH researcher Dr. Kate Johnson for receiving the 2024 Michael Smith Health Research BC Health Professional-Investigator Award for the LEAP Project!

The Lifetime Exposures and Asthma Outcomes Projection (LEAP) Model is designed to improve asthma prevention in Canada. Asthma, the most common chronic disease among Canadian children, is influenced by early-life risk factors. LEAP will help identify which public health interventions can best prevent asthma and when they should be applied, providing high-quality evidence for patients, providers, and policymakers.

▶ Read the full announcement: https://rb.gy/1hbo71
▶ Get to know Dr. Johnson: https://rb.gy/gyxfvg

COPD & Asthma Care Summit Series

In the Spring of 2022, LAH hosted the COPD & Asthma Care Summit Series to seek input from patients, healthcare professionals, health executives, researchers and non-profits, on asthma and COPD prevention and care. The vibrant participation of community members allowed the identification of nine goals for improving prevention and care of these conditions in the Vancouver Coastal region. An overview of the series can be found here.

Publication – Public Health Messaging for Wildfire Smoke: Cast a Wide Net

In the fall of 2020, we distributed an online survey across BC to understand how the public receives, understands, and implements wildfire smoke messaging. With stakeholders, including patients partners from the Community Partner Committee, we wrote about the results of the survey, which have been published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. The article can be found here and the results can be viewed here.

Respiratory Network Newsletter #1, April 2022

Building a respiratory health network for BC

LAH has been building a province-wide respiratory health network. This network will provide an enabling ecosystem to enhance research and knowledge translation through collaboration. Through it, we aim to strengthen the prevention, treatment, and care of respiratory health conditions through cross-sector and inter-disciplinary investigative collaborations that are grounded in meaningful engagement of patients, communities at risk, and knowledge users. The network will facilitate communication, host events, develop resources, and support training and career development.

With support from LAH, the network development is now supported by a dedicated staff person. The network coordinator (Karen Rideout) will work with the LAH team and people from across BC to build this new space to support collaboration, research, and translation.

Remembering Dr. Mark FitzGerald

A message from Dr. Chris Carlsten

As we enter an exciting new era with this network poised to increase synergies for research productivity and impact, we recognize the life and death of Dr. Mark FitzGerald. Mark passed peacefully on January 18, 2022.

Dr. FitzGerald earned his diploma in Medicine in 1978 at the University College, Dublin. He blessed Canada (Hamilton and then Vancouver) from 1984 onwards, but for a brief mid-90s return to his native Ireland. A full professor at UBC since 2002, he earned renown for the breadth of his academic achievements, reflected not only in his hundreds of publications but moreover for their span from an early focus on TB to a later emphasis on asthma, health economics, and respiratory outcomes. Having published in every major medical journal, Dr. FitzGerald also turned to health literacy and ‘humanomics’ in a plea to make such volumes of research more accessible and impactful to the patients who adored him and to so many others who benefited indirectly from his work. Over the years, he was repeatedly awarded by major societies for his contributions and he led dozens of committees and initiatives that collectively had major impact on the respiratory medicine community locally, nationally, and internationally.

Mark’s history is most relevant to the network’s vision. He led the UBC and VGH Divisions of Respiratory Medicine – both for more than 10 years – which benefited from him immeasurably by his epitomizing a rare and consummate constellation of excellence in patient care, education, research, and service. The network is a natural reflection of the next phase of our coming together as a community to break silos and keep prevention and care foremost in our sights, as we remember our common goals and how much stronger we are together when sharing resources, expertise, and commitment to improving respiratory health for all.

Our hearts go out to all those saddened by the passing of such a monumental colleague and friend, and we offer a warm communal embrace as we slowly come to reconcile this profound loss. We stand resolved to use the network as one way to honour Mark positively as we move forward, together.

A memoriam of Dr. FitzGerald written by several of his collaborators and colleagues was published in the Canadian Journal of Respiratory, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine (https://doi.org/10.1080/24745332.2022.2035854).

Finding research synergies in respiratory disease prevention and care

The first network event was hosted by Legacy for Airway Health in January. We brought together 23 researchers from across BC with an interest in respiratory health. This was an opportunity learn about the breadth of research happening across the province, challenges to translating evidence into practice or policy, and start to build new connections. You can read more about the event from LAH News or download the event summary here. We started to build an asset map of respiratory research/ers. Stay tuned for an updated version in the summer.

Re-imagining COPD and asthma prevention and care

Legacy for Airway Health is hosting a four-part summit series to improve COPD and asthma prevention and care in the Vancouver Coastal Health region. This interactive series brings together patients, researchers, clinicians, and healthcare leaders to collaboratively describe a vision for better COPD/asthma care, identify priority problems and solutions, and create an evidence-based action plan to achieve the desired transformations. With its focus on collaboration, evidence, and implementation, this summit series is an example of how a network approach can support innovation and knowledge translation. Day 1 of the series (A look inside the data) was held March 15. There is still time to register for upcoming sessions:

2. Clarifying the vision – April 4, 9am-12pm (This coming Monday!)
3. Forward thinking research and solutions – April 29, 9am-12pm
4. Putting the pieces together – May 30, 9-11am

Click here or email aneisha.collinsfairclough@vch.ca.

Wildfire Smoke Communication Workshops

Legacy for Airway Health (LAH) hosted a two-part workshop in February to focus on effective wildfire smoke communications for the public. We shared the results of an LAH survey about how wildfire smoke communications are received, understood, and implemented by people in communities across BC. Nearly 70 stakeholders from 30 organizations or communities collectively identified challenges, priorities, and solutions to improve how wildfire smoke messages are created and delivered. Learn more about this event and ongoing work here.

We will follow up with more news and updates in early June.

Publication: Better Together: Launching and Nurturing a Community Stakeholder Committee to Enhance Care and Research for Asthma and COPD

In fall of 2020, we evaluated engagement within our Community Partner Committee (CSC) over the first year of its inception using an adaptation of the Patient Engagement in Research Scale (PEIRS-22). With the support of CPC members, student trainees, and the LAH team, we wrote about our experience of building a community of airways disease patients and caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This work has now been published in the journal CHEST (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2021.10.028).

Finding Research Synergies in Respiratory Disease Prevention and Care

LAH hosted the first event to engage researchers from across British Columbia as we launch a new research network to enhance interdisciplinary research and accelerate translation into practice and policy that will improve respiratory health. During two sessions of Finding Research Synergies in Respiratory Disease Prevention and Care in January 2022, we heard from researchers who work across the continuum from bench (biomedical research) to bedside (clinical and health systems research) and beyond (policy and prevention research). We learned about some key evidence gaps that limit our ability to prevent and provide optimal care for respiratory disease. We also learned about constraints to filling those gaps and challenges to translating research into action.

An event summary, which includes an overview of respiratory research knowledge gaps and translational challenges, can be downloaded here.

As we build the (provisionally titled) BC Respiratory Health Network, we will work with researchers, patients, and other stakeholders to enable research and translation. The event summary includes an overview of the researchers and research areas represented at Finding Research Synergies in Respiratory Disease Prevention and Care, which forms Version 1 of a living “asset map” of respiratory research(ers) in British Columbia.

Wildfire Smoke Communication Workshops

In the fall of 2020, Legacy for Airway Health conducted a provincial survey to evaluate how people in BC receive, understand, and implement wildfire smoke communications. The study was the first of its kind to support the improvement of wildfire smoke communications to better protect people living in BC.

To share the results of this survey with relevant stakeholders and support the implementation of the findings, Legacy for Airway Health hosted a two-part virtual workshop on Feb 8^th and 14^th, 2022.

There were sixty-nine stakeholders from thirty different organizations across Canada who attended the workshops; through breakout sessions, stakeholders identified priorities, challenges, and opportunities to optimize wildfire smoke communications. Grounding this work in community perspective, UBC Studios produced a video with five community members’ perspectives, including three of our Community Stakeholder Partner members.  You can view the video here.

A summary of the workshops can be found here and ici (en français).

This project was contracted by Health Canada.