Channel - BCCDC GRAND ROUNDS SERIES
6/30/2026 6:56:29 PM
Channel Videos
From Surveillance to Action to Success: Canada's HPAI in dairy story
This talk will provide a brief overview of the Canadian Animal Health surveillance system and where it fits within the wider scope of Animal Health Canada's mission. We will then go over the detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza in dairy cattle in the United States and how Canada's surveillance efforts helped inform policy decisions that allowed us to prevent the incursion of HPAI into our dairy herd without greatly disrupting industry.
Presenter:
Dr. Murray Gillies grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Sussex, New Brunswick. He graduated from the Atlantic Veterinary College in 2011 and has worked in various roles including a dairy intensive practice in New Zealand, for the Government of New Brunswick’s field veterinary service and as a technical services veterinarian for Vetoquinol Animal Health. Murray is a past president of the Canadian Association of Bovine Veterinarians (CABV) and the current District 12 director for the American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP). He is pursuing a master’s degree in animal health management at the Atlantic Veterinary college and loves discussing dairy practice, bovine veterinary medicine, and science in general. His other interests include video games, anime, nature, hiking, and history.
Mediasite Presenter
1/28/2025 8:00:00 PM
Health inequities and incarceration: A public health perspective
Presenter: Dr. Stuart Kinner is Professor of Health Equity at Curtin University, Head of the Justice Health Unit at University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and an Adjunct Professor in the Griffith Criminology Institute. For the past two decades Stuart’s research has focussed on health services and health outcomes for people who come into contact with the criminal justice system. He Chairs Australia’s National Youth Justice Health Advisory Group, and serves on both the WHO Health in Prisons Programme (WHO-HIPP) Steering Group, and the Worldwide Prison Health Research and Engagement Network (WEPHREN) Steering Committee.
Summary: People who experience incarceration are distinguished by complex health needs. Incarceration is a setting through which vulnerable and marginalised members of the community pass. Health outcomes after incarceration are predictably poor, including elevated rates of death, due to a variety of preventable causes, in both adults and children. Although there is some evidence that incarceration is health depleting, it is also clear that most people who experience incarceration have significant pre-existing, typically under-served, health-related needs. As such, although reducing incarceration is important from a human rights perspective and *may* confer some health benefits, decarceration is not, per se, sufficient to improve the typically poor health outcomes seen in people who experience incarceration. Therefore, high quality healthcare in custody is important to reducing health inequalities, yet healthcare in custody is often inadequate. Investment in measurable custodial healthcare standards, routine monitoring of custodial healthcare, independent research and evaluation in custodial settings, and coordination between custodial and community healthcare will likely yield health, justice, and economic benefits.
BC CDC Presenters
10/18/2022 7:00:00 PM
Hunting for bird flu in the mud: genomic surveillance of avian influenza viruses using environmental specimens from wetland habitats
Summary:
Avian influenza viruses cause costly outbreaks in poultry and they pose a perennial pandemic threat to humans. In this Grand Rounds session, Dr. Kevin Kuchinski will present a new approach to avian influenza surveillance developed by collaborators at the BCCDC and the BC Ministry of Agriculture. This approach is based on genomic sequencing of sediment from wild bird habitats. These specimens are easily-collected, and they are thought to contain a broad diversity of avian influenza viruses, including those excreted by rare and cautious avian species that currently escape surveillance. Dr. Kuchinski will share data from the last two surveillance seasons, demonstrating how environmental genomics enabled the detection of diverse avian influenza viruses, including the H5N1 lineage responsible for on-going poultry outbreaks and increasingly concerning spillovers into mammals. He will also briefly discuss how these technologies can be broadly applied to surveillance of other important viral pathogens.
Presenters:
Dr. Kevin Kuchinski recently completed his PhD in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia. His research was conducted at the BC Centre for Disease Control under the supervision of Dr. Natalie Prystajecky. His work focuses on the development of new laboratory techniques and bioinformatic tools for sequencing diverse viruses in challenging specimens.
Mediasite Presenter
10/3/2023 7:00:00 PM
Intensive transmission in wild, migratory birds drove rapid geographic dissemination and repeated spillovers of H5N1 into agriculture in North America.
Since 2022, H5N1 viruses have caused a panzootic in the Americas, with impacts on wildlife, agriculture, and human health. We will present new data using phylodynamic approaches to reconstruct how these viruses were introduced and spread throughout North America. Our findings implicate surveillance in wild, migratory Anseriformes as critical for outbreak reconstruction, and suggest backyard birds as putative early warning indicators for increasing transmission.
Presenter:
Louise Moncla is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the National Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response: Bovine H5 Outbreak Response Team, World Health Organization Tool for Influenza Pandemic Risk Assessment (TIPRA) Committee, National Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response: Phylodynamics and Risk Assessment Pipeline Working Groups. Louise completed PhD in Microbiology in Tom Friedrich’s lab and a postdoctoral fellowship in Trevor Bedford’s lab.
Mediasite Presenter
11/20/2024 8:00:00 PM
Intensive transmission in wild, migratory birds drove rapid geographic dissemination and repeated spillovers of H5N1 into agriculture in North America.
Since 2022, H5N1 viruses have caused a panzootic in the Americas, with impacts on wildlife, agriculture, and human health. We will present new data using phylodynamic approaches to reconstruct how these viruses were introduced and spread throughout North America. Our findings implicate surveillance in wild, migratory Anseriformes as critical for outbreak reconstruction, and suggest backyard birds as putative early warning indicators for increasing transmission.
Presenter:
Louise Moncla is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the National Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response: Bovine H5 Outbreak Response Team, World Health Organization Tool for Influenza Pandemic Risk Assessment (TIPRA) Committee, National Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response: Phylodynamics and Risk Assessment Pipeline Working Groups. Louise completed PhD in Microbiology in Tom Friedrich’s lab and a postdoctoral fellowship in Trevor Bedford’s lab.
Mediasite Presenter
11/19/2024 8:00:00 PM
Island Health’s Chief Medical Health Officer’s Report on Substance Use and Health.
Presenter bio: Dr. Réka Gustafson Is the Vice President, Population & Public Health and Chief Medical Health Officer at Island Health. In this role, Dr. Gustafson leads programs that aim to improve health and reduce inequities in health for residents of Island Health. These programs include population health assessment, communicable disease control, immunization, maternal and child health programs, health protection and environmental health, community care facilities licensing, and population health promotion. Since substance use is one of the leading causes of poor health and early death in Island Health, Dr. Gustafson also leads the Island Health Addiction Medicine and Substance Use program.
One of her other roles as Chief Medical Health Officer is to advance public policies that improve population health and reduce health inequities in the population.
Dr. Gustafson joined Island Health from the BC Centre for Disease Control, the organization she led during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Prior to that she was the Medical Health Officer for the City of Vancouver and Deputy Chief Medical Health Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health. She is a Clinical Professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health.
Throughout her career, Dr. Gustafson has worked in the areas of HIV prevention and care, outbreak control and response, and overdose prevention and response.
Summary of the talk:
Alcohol, tobacco, and illegally manufactured opioids all cause significant preventable harms to the health of people living in Island Health. Some of these harms are highly visible, while others are more hidden. At the same time, dialogue about substances in our communities is becoming increasingly polarized. We explore the health consequences of a range of substances and examine the differences in our approaches as a society that might contribute to or mitigate harm.
The intention of this report is to contribute to our collective understanding and support conversations and changes in communities that lead to better health. We review data on consumption of substances and health outcomes in the context of current and historical policies and regulations, as well as dominant social narratives and norms.
By exploring a range of psychoactive substances, from the illegal and unregulated to the legal, promoted, and celebrated, the report hopes to show that the way we talk about and approach substances is largely rooted in history and perception, rather than evidence. While substance use is a part of the human experience, the way we use substances and how substance use affects our health is also influenced by our biology, social circumstances, experiences of trauma, and public policies.
We focus on four categories of substances: alcohol, unregulated substances, tobacco, and cannabis; the first three because they contribute the greatest harm within Island Health, and cannabis because enactment of the federal Cannabis Act in 2018 allows us to examine the effect of policy change on health.
2-3 learning objectives
Understand the burden of illness related to substance use in Island Health.
Review the policy context of alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, and unregulated substance consumption.
Consider potential policy interventions to reduce health harms associated with substance use.
Mediasite Presenter
4/22/2025 7:00:00 PM
Subclade K, the sequel: 2025/26 influenza vaccine effectiveness findings from Canada
Summary:
In an October 2025 pre-season risk assessment, Canadian investigators used global genomic and antigenic surveillance data to highlight important mutations in circulating influenza A(H3N2) viruses, including glycosylation changes affecting antigenic site A and major substitutions affecting antigenic site B. Ongoing viral evolution culminated in sweeping predominance of subclade K, an antigenically distinct variant showing early surge in Europe and elsewhere, leading to further threat assessments and vaccine mismatch concerns expressed by others. Here, the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN) provides interim estimates of 2025/26 influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE), including genotypic and phenotypic characterization of contributing case viruses with immuno-epidemiological considerations for subclade K protection.
Presenter:
Danuta Skowronski MD, FRCPC
Dr. Danuta Skowronski is national lead of the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN) that undertakes community-based respiratory virus surveillance and vaccine effectiveness (VE) monitoring including integrated genetic and epidemiological evaluations. With 200 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Skowronski has contributed major insights into the determinants of influenza vaccine performance, including molecular-level vaccine-virus relatedness, repeat vaccination and imprinting effects.
BC CDC Presenters
2/17/2026 8:00:00 PM
What’s new in HPV-associated cancers in men?
Like cervical cancer, the vast majority (90%) of anal cancers and some oral cancers are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). In some populations, specifically men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV, the rates of anal cancer are over 50-times the rate in the general population, and despite decades’ worth of effective HIV therapy, anal cancer rates continue to climb in MSM living with HIV. Anal cancer is one of the most common cancers in individuals living with HIV, and is a leading cause of death in these individuals. There are a number of ongoing large studies in Canada, the USA, and Australia examining the prevention, natural history and screening/treatment of HPV-associated anal pre-cancers, and emerging interest in HPV-associated oral cancers. This talk will review recent evidence from these trials, and discuss directions forward for HPV-associated cancers in males.
Bio:
Dr. Troy Grennan is currently the Physician Lead for the Provincial HIV/STI Program at the BC Centre for Disease Control, as well as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of British Columbia. Following training in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and medical microbiology, he completed a CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network postdoctoral fellowship examining human papillomavirus (HPV) in HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM). His research and clinical work currently focuses on HIV and STI prevention, as well as HPV and anal cancer screening, with a particular focus on MSM. He is currently co-PI on the CIHR Team Grant “HPV Screening and Vaccine Evaluation in HIV-Positive MSM”, and also co-leads two grants on novel syphilis prevention using doxycycline chemoprophylaxis.
BC CDC Presenters
2/25/2020 8:00:00 PM
2023/24 mid-season influenza and Omicron XBB.1.5 vaccine effectiveness estimates from the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN)
The 2023/24 influenza season in Canada has been characterized by more typical seasonality and A(H1N1)pdm09 subtype predominance, with influenza A(H3N2) and SARS-CoV-2 viruses co-circulating. Updated 2023/24 multivalent influenza and monovalent COVID-19 vaccines became available through publicly-funded immunization campaigns beginning October 2023, with their co-administration encouraged to facilitate uptake. The Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN) undertook mid-season estimation of 2023/24 vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza and COVID-19, including detailed whole genome sequencing characterization of these highly changeable viruses in relation to their respective vaccine components. Findings and factors possibly influencing VE estimates will be discussed.
Presenter:
For the past 25 years, Dr. Danuta Skowronski has led the Influenza and Emerging Respiratory Pathogens Team at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) where she has informed surveillance, research and program/policy recommendations for influenza, and more recently COVID-19. She is credited with earliest co-development of the test-negative design (TND), a methodology now used globally to monitor seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE), and more recently also COVID-19 VE. As national lead of the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN), including community-based outpatient sites in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec for the past 15 years and with 200 scientific publications, Dr. Skowronski has contributed major insights into factors influencing vaccine performance against highly changeable viruses.
Mediasite Presenter
2/20/2024 8:00:00 PM
Adaptation to climate change-driven infectious disease risks in Canada
Presenter: Dr. Nick Ogden is a UK-trained veterinarian with a doctorate in vector-borne disease ecology and post-doctoral training in disease modelling. He is a senior research scientist and Director of Public Health Risk Sciences division within the National Microbiology Laboratory of Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), focusing on assessing disease risk by study of the ecology, epidemiology and genetic diversity of vectors and zoonotic and vector-borne micro-organisms. A key component of his work is assessing impacts of climate change on zoonoses and vector-borne diseases, and developing tools for public health adaptation. During the pandemic he led PHAC’s COVID-19 modelling and emerging science teams.
Summary: Multiple national and international assessments of possible impacts of climate change on infectious diseases have highlighted a range of climate sensitive diseases, and the possibility of i) geographic spread of infectious diseases from endemic areas to regions where they have not been seen before; and ii) more epidemic behaviour of mosquito-borne, and food and water-borne infectious diseases due to climate variability and extreme weather events. To address these threats adaptation programs requires enhanced activity across public health functions of risk assessment, surveillance, and interventions (preventive measures, public health guidance, control measures, risk communications, early warning systems). Our progress in this endeavour will be described.
Mediasite Presenter
4/16/2024 7:00:00 PM
Addressing COVID-19 Vaccine concerns AmoNg people who are incarCeratEd Study (ADVANCE)
Summary: People who experience incarceration are more negatively impacted by COVID-19, and are less likely to accept vaccination than the general population (in BC). This has been attributed to a lack of trust among people who experience incarceration. Public Health Orders and operational mandates in Corrections and Social Services (such as housing) have worsened distrust as further restrictions are imposed on people. To address distrust and promote vaccine confidence, the ADVANCE Study aims to co-develop peer-to-peer education strategies with people who are incarcerated. This Integrated Knowledge Translation (IKT) of emergent design uses Participatory Health Research (PHR) methods to engage those most impacted by the issues in setting strategic priorities. In this way, we anticipate that we will (1) establish foundational approaches to PHR and IKT with people who are incarcerated, (2) improve understanding of knowledge mobilization at the intersections of healthcare and carceral systems, and (3) address an urgent healthcare issue while identifying pathways toward addressing persistent health and justice inequities.
Presenters:
Sofia Bartlett (she/her) is the Senior Scientist, STIBBIs at BCCDC, and a Primary Investigator of the ADVANCE Study.
Julia Santana Parrilla (she/her) is the ADVANCE Study Research Coordinator.
Taylor Teal (they/them) is a learning designer and facilitator with the ADVANCE Study.
BC CDC Presenters
3/29/2022 7:00:00 PM
-An introduction to the Bridge Research Consortium: Insights into social and behavioural factors that may hinder optimal uptake of new vaccines and immunotherapies during a public health emergency.
Funded by the Canada Biomedical Research Fund to support Canada’s Biomanufacturing and Life Sciences Strategy, and part of Canada’s Immuno-Engineering and Biomanufacturing Hub (CIEBH), the Bridge Research Consortium (BRC) is a multidisciplinary team of leading social sciences and humanities scholars from across Canada and beyond. The mission of the Bridge Research Consortium is to bring together diverse expertise and perspectives to better understand—and support—public trust in, and equitable access to, new vaccines and immune-based innovations that will strengthen Canada’s readiness for future pandemic events.
This talk will introduce the work of the BRC, with a focus on serving as a social and behavioural barometer—surfacing emerging issues, shifting trends, and public concerns that may influence the uptake of new vaccines and immunotherapies. Through people-centred insights, the BRC helps illuminate societal factors shaping Canada’s vaccine and immunotherapies landscape.
Learning Objectives:
Understand current knowledge, attitudes and practices related to new vaccines and immunotherapies among adults including high-priority groups in Canada.
Identify themes, trends and potential mis/disinformation emerging on social media platforms related to highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1).
Support a high-quality information environment including actionable strategies to prevent or mitigate online abuse of health communicators.
Speaker Bios
Dr. Kelley Lee (BRC Scientific Co-Director).
Dr. Lee is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University. She was previously Professor of Global Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she co-directed the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health. Her current leadership roles include co-chairing a Royal Society of Canada-Canadian Academy of Health Sciences Expert Panel on Canada's Role in Global Health; and Commissioner on the National University of Singapore-Lancet PRIME Commission. She is a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and Royal Society of Canada. She has published 15 books, 250+ papers and 70 book chapters, including co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics.
Dr. Heidi Tworek (BRC, Lead Scholar).
Dr. Heidi Tworek is a Canada Research Chair and associate professor of international history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She is an award-winning researcher of media, history, health communications, international organizations, and platform governance. She directs the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at UBC. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. She co-edits the Journal of Global History.
Dr. Rackeb Tesfaye (BRC, Knowledge Mobilization Lead and Senior Scientist).
Dr. Rackeb Tesfaye holds a PhD in Neuroscience from McGill University. She has led patient-oriented research involving youth, families, clinicians, and bioethicists to inform health policy and education. As a Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the University of Oxford, she supported global neuropsychiatric studies using mixed-methods approaches. Dr. Tesfaye has held various knowledge mobilization roles, from translating pandemic-related research at Simon Fraser University to coordinating research-community partnerships that expand evidence-based autism care in Quebec. With over a decade of science communication experience, she has been a lecturer at McGill University, a CBC Radio columnist, and a co-founder of initiatives like ComSciCon Canada and BlackInNeuro. She has also advised organizations like Canada’s Chief Scientist’s Youth Council, Falling Walls, and The Kavli Foundation.
Mediasite Presenter
5/1/2025 7:00:00 PM
Annual influenza update: observations from 2018/19; implications for 2019/20
Dr. Skowronski will present her annual update on influenza virus and vaccine effectiveness monitoring, including observations from the 2018/19 season and implications for 2019/20. In particular, she will present recent observations and the proposed hypothesis of imprint-regulated effect of vaccine (I-REV), including potential immunological mechanisms, proposed investigations and possible solutions.
Bio: With more than 160 related publications, Dr. Skowronski is an internationally-recognized expert on influenza and Lead of the Influenza and Emerging Respiratory Pathogens team at the British Columbia Centre for Disease control (BCCDC). She is credited with co-development of the test-negative design, a methodology now used globally to monitor seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness. Her work has led to paradigm shifting observations and understanding of the complex immuno-epidemiological influences on influenza vaccine performance.
BC CDC Presenters
11/19/2019 8:00:00 PM
Applications of viral genomics for COVID-19 in BC - Grand Rounds - July 7,2020
Summary: We have been performing sequence analysis of Sars-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19 using nanopore sequencing methods since February 2020. Our results have shown that this is a practical method for obtaining SARS-CoV-2 sequence data, which can provide insight in the transmission of the virus and is likely to lead to actionable public health decisions.
Presenters: Dr. Richard Harrigan is a Professor in the Division of AIDS at UBC, who has spent the last two decades applying sequence analyses to the care and management of human viral diseases. Dr. Natalie Prystajecky is an Environmental Microbiologist at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory who has applied genomics in the context of foodborne outbreaks and now for COVID-19. She is also a Clinical Assistant Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC.
BC CDC Presenters
7/7/2020 7:00:00 PM
Cancelled - Developing the BC Viral Hepatitis Elimination Roadmap-Provincial Collaboration and Lessons Learned
This session will explore the multi year development process for the forthcoming BC Viral Hepatitis Elimination Roadmap (the Roadmap) a process which was co-chaired by Dr Sofia Bartlett (BCCDC) and Deb Schmitz (BC Hepatitis Network) in collaboration with a project team, Executive and Steering Committee and multiple Working Groups.
This session will provide insights into why the Roadmap was developed, and the innovative approach for it’s creation. Community engagement and partnerships across the province has driven the Roadmap project, and this session will offer information on why this was so effective and how this model of engagement can be applied to the development of other public health strategies. This session will also share Thee eat-truth telling of lessons learned during the Roadmap project.
This session will be moderated by Ashley Bentley, Lead Population and Public Health Initiatives and Innovation (BCCDC) and Roadmap project team member.
Presenter bios:
Dr. Sofia Bartlett (she/her) is the interim scientific director for Clinical Prevention Services at BCCDC. She provides scientific leadership of STIBBI and TB surveillance and programming at BCCDC, and conducts applied public health research to address related knowledge gaps. She is also an assistant professor (partner) in the UBC School of Population and Public Health. Dr. Bartlett is a co-investigator with the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network and the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C, and co-leads the Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster at UBC.
Florence (Flo) Ranville (she/her) is Pine Creek First Nations on her father's side and Woodlands Cree on her mother's side. She has seven children and six grandchildren. Flo has been HIV+ for 25 years. Flo contracted hepatitis C in 1998 before contracting HIV in 1999 and completed Interferon treatment with no return in 2002. She has worked in community-based research since 2005 as a peer researcher, peer mentor, and peer consultant. Flo has been a Peer Research Associate at the BCCSU since 2024. Flo is a personal survivor of violence, child apprehension, substance use, homelessness, incarceration, and financial insecurity/poverty. Flo was also a previous sex worker. Flo experienced discrimination/stigma in the healthcare system in 2017 and almost died. Flo is passionate about supporting community members who have faced similar barriers to health, drawing on Cree teachings and lived experiences to care for them holistically. Flo is a Working Group member for the Roadmap.
Mo Korchinski (she/her) is the Executive Director of Unlocking the Gates Service Society (UTG). Drawing from her lived experiences with substance use and incarceration, Mo has dedicated her life to helping others break the cycle of incarceration by addressing trauma and supporting healing for people who experience incarceration. She is an advocate for policy change and increased resources for her community. Mo is a public speaker, author, and filmmaker. She worked for many years in the field of community-based participatory research alongside the Collaborating Centre for Prison Health and Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Mo is a Working Group member for the Roadmap.
Learning objectives:
Understanding the context of viral hepatitis in Canada and BC.
Learn about the Roadmap development process, provincial collaboration and data collection methods.
Learn about community engagement strategies targeted at the priority populations identified in the Roadmap.
Unpack lessons learned and truth telling for the development of the Roadmap.
Mediasite Presenter
5/13/2025 7:00:00 PM
CANCOVID-Preg: Canadian COVID-19 in Pregnancy Surveillance - Epidemiology, Maternal and Infant Outcomes - June 16, 2020
Summary: This talk will describe the establishment of CANCOVID-Preg, present some preliminary data from BC and Ontario as well as describe some planned sub-studies. In addition, opportunity for antenatal serosurveillance to study seroprevalance of COVID-19 in the Canadian population will be discussed.
Presenter: Dr. Deborah Money is a Reproductive Infectious Diseases (RID) Clinician/Scientist who runs a RID research program studying the HPV vaccine, perinatal outcomes in women living with HIV and congenital infections. Currently, she is the lead, with UBC/WHRI as the coordinating centre, of the pan-Canadian surveillance study of the impact of COVID-19 in pregnancy and for the infants and is part of a WHO working group on COVID in pregnancy. She is also a member of the Federal Task Force on Immunity.
BC CDC Presenters
6/16/2020 7:00:00 PM
Catalyzing upstream mental health promotion and prevention through the development of the Youth Development Instrument
Summary: Mental illness and substance use disorders (MSUDs) create a substantial health and economic burden in Canada, with one in two Canadians experiencing an MSUD by age 40 and an estimated $51 billion in costs yearly. An estimated 75% of MSUDs have their genesis before the age of 25 years, affecting 7.5 million Canadian children and youth. Social and emotional learning (SEL) and positive childhood experiences like supportive family relationships, community belonging, and coping skills, as well as structural supports like improving access to care, are protective and can avert or delay mental illness onset and/or severity. Yet 95% of health system funding is dedicated to specialized, hospital-based or downstream services, creating compelling potential for early intervention and prevention programming. Today’s Grand Rounds describes how the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), a survey of youth mental health and well-being among BC Grade 11 students, will inform strategies to reduce mental illness incidence. The YDI builds on existing BC child development data collected for over 400,000 children at age 5, 9 and 12 years by the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP-UBC), creating a longitudinal cohort by linking student data. Cohort data will be linked with health services data to identify modifiable factors predicting mental illness. Inter-ministerial and intersectoral YDI advisory boards representing education, social work, public health and health services with central leadership from young people themselves guide project delivery and translation of findings into practice.
Bios:
Dr. Hasina Samji an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a Senior Scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control. She has a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology (Johns Hopkins) and studies how synergistic epidemics, or “syndemics,” of illnesses like HIV, HCV, and mental illness and substance use disorder interacting with contextual factors like poverty and early life trauma can create mutually reinforcing clusters of epidemics among populations, resulting in poorer access to healthcare and outcomes. Dr. Samji leads the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), an interdisciplinary study measuring predictors of positive youth well-being, mental health, and development in high school students in collaboration with the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP-UBC), community, clinical and policy partners, and youth themselves. The YDI will elucidate upstream skill-development and structural supports for STBBI prevention. She is also the co-PI of a study in partnership with Anxiety Canada to measure the mental health impacts of the COVID-19: https://www.bcchr.ca/POP/our-research/pics
Dr. Martin Guhn is Associate Professor at the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP), School of Population and Public Health, UBC, and member of the Canadian Council on the Social Determinants of Health. He has a PhD in Human Development (UBC), conducted a Michael Smith Foundation of Health Research postdoctoral fellowship in Population Health at HELP, and has a master’s degree in Psychology and a bachelor degree in Music. His interdisciplinary, applied research focuses on social, cultural, demographic, and socio-economic determinants of children’s and adolescents’ developmental health, wellbeing, and educational trajectories. This research draws from population-level data linkages, and the EDI, MDI, TDI, CHEQ, and YDI research projects. Further research interests include children’s social and emotional development, bio-ecological theories of human development, and validation of population-level assessment. A primary goal of this research is to contribute to policy decision making and community-based knowledge mobilization that helps all children thrive.
BC CDC Presenters
3/2/2021 8:00:00 PM
Centering First Nations voices and community-led responses to BC's toxic drug emergency: Learnings from Phase 1 of FNHA’s Indigenizing Harm Reduction Study
PLEASE NOTE THAT AUDIO ISSUES ARE DUE TO INTERNET CONNECTION QUALITY DURING THE RECORDING PROCESS. HOWEVER VISUAL CONTENT AND AUDIO INFORMATION IS COMPLETE.
Due to ongoing harms of colonization, Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately represented in toxic drug-related deaths in British Columbia (BC). With mainstream harm reduction services failing to wholistically address these disparities, Phase I of the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA)-led Indigenizing Harm Reduction (IHR) Study sought to understand BC First Nations perspectives of and approaches to harm reduction and identify wise practices in responding to the toxic drug emergency that could be used to form a harm reduction model for BC First Nations. This study is the first of its kind that aims to understand how First Nations communities in BC view and practice harm reduction and offers teachings that will be critical for institutions committed to ensuring health equity for Indigenous peoples.
In this presentation, we will share results from Phase I of the study, gathered through conversational interviews and questionnaires with 56 service providers and First Nations people with lived and/or living experience of substance use across BC’s five health regions. We will discuss wise practices in First Nations-led harm reduction that embody community-led, wholistic, person-centered care options, and include culture, relationships, and land-based programming. We will then discuss ongoing gaps and barriers for First Nations people who use substances, and recommended paths forward for culturally safe and accessible services that ensure long-term wellbeing for our relatives who use substances. Finally, we will share how we applied our methodology, which embodied a Two-Eyed Seeing approach, to promote the use of culturally safe and relevant research methodologies with Indigenous peoples.
Speaker’s bio:
Ashley Simpson (MPH) is of Wet'suwet'en, Scottish, and English ancestry and a grateful guest on unceded, ancestral Coast Salish territories. She is a qualitative health researcher with a background in Indigenous community-based research and serves as Project Director of Indigenous Harm Reduction Research at the FNHA.
Amiti Mehta (MPH) is a settler of Punjabi ancestry living on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Semiahmoo people. She is a mixed methods researcher with a background in public health, harm reduction, drug policy reform and works as a Senior Research Coordinator at the FNHA. Amiti contributed to writing this manuscript.
Alya Govorchin (MSc) is a white settler of English/Croatian ancestry living on the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is a qualitative researcher with a background in harm reduction and Indigenous community-based research and works as a Research Analyst at the FNHA.
Learning objectives:
Understand how First Nations people in BC are navigating the toxic drug emergency and the systemic and social barriers they are facing in accessing harm reduction and substance use services
Learn about wholistic, culturally based harm reduction practices currently being implemented by First Nations communities and organizations in BC, which can inform more equitable and responsive policy and service design
Learn how research can be carried out with Indigenous communities in a good way—ensuring cultural safety, community control, and respect for self-determination—using culturally appropriate methodologies, including Two-Eyed Seeing and community-based approaches
BC CDC Presenter
6/17/2025 7:00:00 PM
Chronic Disease Surveillance at BCCDC
The goal of the presentation is to provide an overview of available information and tools as well as to highlight key projects completed or under way. Dr. Kate Smolina will introduce current resources available both publically and internally on data and statistics relating to chronic disease in BC, including Chronic Disease Dashboard, Cancer Dashboard, and a new CCHS Dashboard.
Dr. Kate Smolina is the director of the BC Observatory for Population & Public Health, a partnership between the BC Ministry of Health and all BC health authorities to advance non-communicable disease, injury, and risk and protective factor surveillance in BC. Dr. Smolina holds a BSc in Bio-Medical Science from the University of Guelph and a DPhil in Public Health from the University of Oxford. Her professional career has been largely focused on chronic disease surveillance, linked administrate data, and health policy.
2. Dr. Drona Rasali: Indicators of Multimorbidity for Chronic Disease Surveillance
Multimorbidity is becoming increasingly a key public health and primary care issue and is a complex underlying risk factor for COVID-19 case severity. A BCCDC team conducted a scoping review of the chronic disease multimorbidities for exploring the development of a multimorbidity indicator. I present briefly the development of an indicator comprising two or more conditions out of BC Chronic Disease Registries (CDR) is now being made available for surveillance through BCCDC Chronic Disease Dashboard.
Dr. Drona Rasali, is the Director of Population Health Surveillance and Epidemiology working in the area Population and Public Health at BCCDC, PHSA since 2012. Prior to joining the PHSA, Dr. Rasali was the Provincial Chronic Disease Epidemiologist in the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health from 2005 to 2012. He holds a designation of a Fellow of American College of Epidemiology (FACE) and is an adjunct professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health. He earned his Doctorate degree from the University of Manitoba, specializing in quantitative genetic analyses using animal models and epidemiologic analyses. He has more than 150 peer reviewed journal papers, government reports and technical reports to his credits in wide ranging fields including chronic disease epidemiology, public health, population genetics, veterinary medicine, agriculture, food, social justice, and general interest.
BC CDC Presenters
3/9/2021 8:00:00 PM
Compound Climate Hazards: Understanding and Addressing the Health Risks of Co-Exposure to Wildfire Smoke and Extreme Heat in British Columbia
With climate change, heat waves and wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense across Canada. While both extreme heat and wildfire smoke pose a substantial health risk, most available research and public health guidance has focused on these climate hazards in isolation, without considering the potential health risks of simultaneous exposure to heat and smoke. In this presentation, we will share our work investigating the frequency and intensity of co-occurring wildfire smoke and extreme heat events across British Columbia (BC), highlighting changes in exposure over time and identifying highly exposed communities. We will also share findings from our epidemiological analyses of the synergistic effects of wildfire smoke and extreme heat on community mortality in BC, underscoring both the significance and complexity of the health risks posed by co-exposure. Finally, we will discuss current gaps in public health messaging around compound climate hazards and how we can translate research into actionable guidance.
Presenters’ bio
Dr. Stephanie Cleland is an Assistant Professor and the Legacy for Airway Health Chair in Promotion of Lung Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She is also a research scientist at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute and an affiliate investigator in Environmental Health Services at the BCCDC. Dr. Cleland’s research explores how climate change-related exposures, such as wildfire smoke and extreme heat, adversely affect human health and well-being.
Dr. Eric Coker is a Senior Scientist with the BCCDC in Environmental Health Services. With over ten years of training and experience in air pollution exposure assessment and epidemiology, Dr. Coker's research portfolio at the BCCDC has focused on the epidemiology of wildfire smoke and improving assessment and public health communication of wildfire smoke exposure.
BC CDC Presenter
6/24/2025 7:00:00 PM
Covid-19: Guidelines for Testing and Interpretation. MAY 26 2020
Dr. Linda Hoang is a physician and the associate director and program head of the Bacteriology & Mycology Lab at BCCDC, as well as a clinical associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC.
Dr. Victor Yuen is a resident physician now graduating in Medical Microbiology from UBC. His primary research interests are molecular diagnostics, microbiology laboratory quality improvement, and public health clinical epidemiology.
Mediasite Presenter
5/26/2020 5:00:00 PM
From Insight to Impact Celebrating a decade of the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort and what comes next
Presenter bios
Dr. Naveed Janjua (MBBS, MSc DrPH) is the Director of the University of British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (UBCCDC) at the Faculty of Medicine, a Clinical Professor at the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, and the Executive Director of Epidemiology & Intelligence Services at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC).
His research focuses on infectious diseases—including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and COVID-19—health disparities, health outcomes, and the effectiveness of prevention and treatment interventions to generate real-world evidence. Dr. Janjua uses large, real-world data cohorts, such as the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort and the BC COVID-19 Cohort, to conduct high-impact research that has informed clinical practice and public health policies both nationally and internationally.
Dr. Sofia Bartlett (PhD) is the interim scientific director for Clinical Prevention Services at BCCDC. She is also an assistant professor (partner) in the UBC School of Population and Public Health. Sofia provides scientific leadership of STIBBI and TB surveillance and programming at BCCDC, and conducts applied public health research to address related knowledge gaps. Dr. Bartlett is a co-investigator with the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network and the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C, and co-leads the Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster at UBC.
Learning objectives:
· Summarize the history, scope, and key research findings of the BC Hep Testers Cohort over the past decade
· Describe how evidence from the cohort has influenced public health policy, clinical guidelines, and public health monitoring and surveillance practices at provincial, national, and international levels
· Introduce the IDEALS Mart data platform and the OPTIMISE Project, highlighting opportunities for future research and public health impact
BC CDC Presenter
10/21/2025 7:00:00 PM
Grand Rounds Series: Sept 17, 2024: Learning From Newly HIV Diagnosed People in British Columbia: Findings from a Community-Based Qualitative Study
Background: Despite advancements in HIV prevention and treatment, gaps in HIV prevention and care cascades persist in British Columbia (BC). As a result, new HIV diagnoses continue, particularly among communities that experience intersectional health and social inequities.
Methods: Using a community-based approach and applying GIPA/MEPA principles, we conducted in-depth peer-led interviews with people in BC who were diagnosed with HIV between 2018-2023. Eligible participants were aged 16+ and were recruited in partnership with local HIV service organizations and care providers. Interviews were conducted in English (n=20) or Spanish (n=11) and thematically analyzed by peer researchers.
Results: Most participants (27/31) were 2S/GBTQM and non-binary people, a third were Latinx (n=12), and ages ranged 24-62. Participants highlighted barriers to HIV education, PrEP access, and testing services, which were amplified due to structural barriers, and emphasized the importance of trauma-informed diagnosis. Participants shared positive experiences with their HIV care providers but highlighted the need to address HIV stigma and access to peer support and opportunities to better integrate STI prevention, including doxy PEP/PrEP, and improve availability of long-acting treatment.
Discussion: HIV responses must actively address structural drivers and inequities and resultant gaps in HIV prevention and care. Potential enhancements to the HIV care cascade should include multilingual HIV education, improved access to long-acting treatment, and services that are tailored to communities that are disproportionately impacted by HIV.
With over a decade of experience, Jean Reyes and his commitment to social justice has left an indelible mark on various organizations, both locally and internationally. Jean’s journey began in the heart of Latin America, where he actively participated in projects spanning child protection, sex education, and microfinance entrepreneurship. As an active member of AIDS Vancouver, Jean played a pivotal role in ensuring that newcomers living with HIV gained equitable access to healthcare services in Canada. Currently, Jean serves as a Legal Navigator at Legal Aid BC, where their guidance and case management becomes a lifeline for those navigating complex legal systems. With compassion and expertise, Jean assists individuals in need, particularly Refugee Claimants, helping them find their way through. His advocacy work bridged gaps, empowered individuals, and fostered a sense of belonging within the community.
Ben Klassen (he/him) is an Associate Director of Research at the Community-Based Research Centre, where he oversees several 2S/LGBTQ+ health studies across Canada. He is passionate about utilizing community-based approaches to empower and make a difference in 2S/LGBTQ+ communities. Ben has been involved in HIV research for over 10 years, including the "HIV in My Day" oral history project since 2017.
Learning objectives:
Learn about communities that are impacted by HIV and the barriers they experience in accessing HIV prevention in BC
Learn how HIV prevention, diagnosis, and care can be enhanced in BC from the perspectives of those recently diagnosed with HIV
Mediasite Presenter
9/17/2024 7:00:00 PM
Groundwater and the Fate of Humanity
Summary:
It is well known that humanity faces a crisis with climate change however there is a second more urgent crisis that humanity is facing. This crisis is freshwater and since groundwater is 99% of all freshwaters it is essentially a groundwater crisis. Of the 17 Sustainability goals formed by the UN, 8 are groundwater dependent. These goals are to be met in 2030. In 2010 the UN passed an additional resolution that safe drinking water is a human right however more than 3 billion people do not yet have access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
The second part of the freshwater crisis concerns depletion of aquifers for irrigation. Approximately, 40% of agriculture in the globalized food system comes from irrigation and 70% of this irrigation water is groundwater. We have reached peak global water use at a time when the population is set to increase by another billion people and aquifers are being depleted, many beyond recovery in human time. Hence, we have a global food crisis looming that is dependent upon many factors for which availability of irrigation water will ultimately be a determinant.
The third part of the freshwater crisis is contamination. Most groundwater has anthropogenic chemicals, and this is increasing, the health effects are unknown because of the combinations of contaminants. All countries will be impacted by the freshwater crisis, but the impacts will depend very much on the particular region. Policies should be directed at growing more local food. In Canada, 30% of the population relies on well water, mostly rural families, and small communities. This includes 52% percent of our First Nations population which rely on groundwater. Groundwater is responsive to drought and increased rainfall both of which can be problematic. Climate change and continuing contamination is going to increase the impacts on this population. To address this monitoring needs to be increased, well designs need to be modified to be more protective and this segment of the Canadian population needs to become much better informed of the water supply with increased interactions with government organizations. The Groundwater Project has been set up to make these problems better understood including communications with the lay public. Reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gases is of course necessary but this will take decades and the outcomes will be determined over a much longer time span than the outcomes for the water crisis. If the water crisis does not become a global priority the threat of societal collapse becomes large and therefore the prospects for reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gases become nil.
Presenters:
Dr. John Cherry’s research pioneered the field of groundwater pollution, now known as ‘contaminant hydrogeology’. He co-authored the book Groundwater with R.A. Freeze (1979) and was awarded the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize (Singapore) in 2016 followed by the Stockholm Water Prize in 2020. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering and on retirement from the University of Waterloo in 2006 became a Distinguished Emeritus Professor. He is a principal investigator at the Morwick G360 Institute for Groundwater Research at the University of Guelph, Canada. During 2017, he founded and is the leader of The Groundwater Project ([www.gw-project.org]www.gw-project.org), a global philanthropic project aimed at raising groundwater consciousness and strengthening groundwater expertise worldwide, in addition to making groundwater knowledge accessible for everyone everywhere.
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Mediasite Presenter
6/13/2023 7:00:00 PM
Health and economic impact of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) immunization program in British Columbia.
Presenter: Nirma Khatri Vadlamudi, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Vaccine Evaluation Center, BC Children’s Research Institute, University of British Columbia. She has been involved in vaccine research since 2016, investigating immunogenicity, safety, efficacy, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of novel vaccines to prevent infectious diseases.
Summary: In this BCCDC Grand Rounds, Dr. Vadlamudi will present findings from a project designed to understand the health and economic impact of infant immunization policy at the population level to help shape healthcare policy for reduction of the pneumococcal disease burden in BC.
BC CDC Presenters
12/6/2022 8:00:00 PM
Health effects of air pollution on mental health: a literature review and an application in the Rome Longitudinal Study
Presenter:
Massimo Stafoggia, PhD
Senior Researcher, Department of Epidemiology, Lazio region Health Service / ASL Roma 1, Rome, Italy
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Visiting Researcher, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Dr. Stafoggia graduated in Statistical Sciences on 2001, took a M.Sc. in Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and a PhD at the Karolinska Institutet of Stockholm, Sweden. He has been working as a biostatistician at the Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service, Italy, since April 2003. Since January 2023 he is affiliated at Karolinksa Institutet, Sweden, as Adjunct Senior Lecturer. Currently (from July 2023 to June 2024) he is a visiting researcher at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Fielding School of Public Health. He has contributed to the planning and implementation of several environmental epidemiology studies, at the Italian (SISTI, EPIAIR 1 and 2) and European level (HEAPSS, AIRGENE, ESCAPE, EXHAUSTION, ELAPSE, EXPANSE, MCC Collaborative Network), aimed at investigating the relationship between environmental exposures and adverse health outcomes. He has been Principal Investigator of the EU-funded project MED-PARTICLES: “Particles size and composition in Mediterranean countries: geographical variability and short-term health effects” (LIFE10 ENV/IT/000327) and co-P.I. of the Italian projects BEEP: “Big Data in Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology” and BIGEPI: “Use of BIG data for the investigation of the acute and chronic effects of air pollution in the Italian population”. In the last years, he has been involved in several national and international projects aimed at developing spatiotemporal models to predict daily PM concentrations at fine spatial grid in Italy, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and UK, by use of satellite data. Among these, he is referent of Italy for the NASA-led project MAIA.Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large impacts on population health including changes to the circulation of other respiratory viruses. Additionally, it has also highlighted health disparities, especially among specific population groups. In this presentation, we will present a recently published ecological study of COVID infection among population sub-groups in Greater Vancouver British Columbia between June and November 2020. We will then present an application of geospatial machine learning techniques to forecast primary care visits for respiratory illnesses. We will finish with some potential future directions for utilizing modern machine learning techniques with spatiotemporal disease data.
Summary: Exposure to air pollution has been identified as a major risk factor for mental health, however the literature is still sparse and large gaps remain on specific mental disorders. In this presentation Dr. Massimo Stafoggia will summarize the epidemiologic literature, showing the main research gaps. In the second part of the presentation, Dr. Stafoggia will report methods and results from a large study conducted in Rome, on an administrative cohort of 1.5 million individuals, where hospital admissions and drug prescription archives have been used to identify multiple mental diseases, and have been related to long term exposure to several air pollutants. Dr. Massimo Stafoggia will conclude his talk
presenting new research opportunities, in particular a large European proposal under evaluation in HORIZON EUROPE.
Mediasite Presenter
5/7/2024 7:00:00 PM
Host Mediator Modulation in COVID-19
Summary: I review the clinical features of acute COVID-19 briefly before illustrating the clinical stages of COVID-19. The stages of COVID-19 matter A LOT because therapies are optimized according to patient stage. The early pre-clinical stage is the arena for primary prevention by behaviours and use of vaccination. The early viral stage is managed with anti-virals and antibodies. Some have recently suggested a role for anti-inflammatory agents early, but this is uncertain. The later hospitalization stage is when anti-inflammatory and immune modulators appear to play a role.
I then review important host mediators in COVID-19, the classes of host mediators and the strategies for mitigating some of the aberrant host-mediated responses to COVID-19. I choose several classes of mediators and review prominent trials of host mediators, prominent for efficacy and prominent for design features.
I present an update on our BC-grown international CIHR-funded ARBs CORONA program and present results of plasma renin angiotensin (RAS) components and proteomics studies, preliminary results of our pan-Canadian COVID-19 cohort evaluation of angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) in COVID-19, related meta-analyses (acute cardiac injury and acute kidney injury in COVID-19) , and an update of our recently launched international pivotal randomized controlled trial of an ARB (losartan) vs. usual care in adults hospitalized with COVID-19. Generic losartan is $0.25-0.50 per day, so if it proven effective, it could be used globally. I close with a future vision of COVID-19 prevention, care, and follow-up.
Presenter: Dr. Russell is Professor of Medicine at University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Principal Investigator in the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI) at the University of British Columbia and St. Paul’s Hospital where he focuses on septic shock and COVID-19 research. He is on the editorial board of 5 journals, has 290 peer-reviewed publications, 277 international presentations, 45 chapters (including the chapter on septic shock in Cecil Medicine), 200 abstracts and 12 patents. Dr. Russell has four major current themes of research (1) randomized controlled trials in patients with septic shock and (2) the genomics and pharmacogenomics of septic shock. He is now developing two new themes (3) the renin angiotensin system (RAS) in COVID-19 and (4) operating characteristics and predictive value of short-term versus long-term outcome measures in sepsis. Dr. Russell’s research highlights (1) direct high impact on care of critically ill septic patients around the world, (2) publication in high impact journals, and (3) most important, illustrate the fundamental strategy of his research career, the successful coupling of expertise in clinical trials with biobanking and discovery of novel biomarkers that explain mechanisms of therapies in sepsis.
BC CDC Presenters
12/1/2020 8:00:00 PM
January 16 - Grand Rounds - The Utility of Mathematical Modelling of Serological Data in Assessing the Impact of Vaccination Programs in Kenya
Presenter: Caroline Mburu recently joined the team as a postdoctoral research associate. She will be working on utilising mathematical models to predict future scenarios of Monkeypox outbreaks as well as exploration of optimal surveillance strategies including use of wastewater data for early outbreak detection. She has an academic background in applied mathematics and medical statistics, and her research interest is in vaccine epidemiology and the application of mathematical models in controlling infectious diseases. She did a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which she is hoping to defend in February. Her doctoral thesis was on calibration of statistical and mathematical models using serological data to evaluate the impact of vaccination programs in Kenya. Beyond academia, she is passionate about collaborating with governments and policymakers to effectively translate scientific findings into impactful policies.
Summary: Serological surveys have been successfully used to design optimum vaccination strategies in developed countries as they provide a means for directly estimating the levels of population protection against Vaccine Preventable diseases. The aim of my PhD was to utilise a combination of serological data and mathematical modelling approaches across different pathogens to develop locally tailored interventions for disease prevention and control. Specifically, I first described the immunological profile for Measles and Rubella and used these profiles to disentangle the relative contribution of infection, routine vaccination and SIAs to Measles seroconversion in Kenyan children. I then evaluated utility of SIA to mitigate Measles outbreak in the post pandemic period. I also described the immunological profile for Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus to assess the need for a booster dose and used the Tetanus immunity profiles to estimate the effective immunisation coverage. Finally, I described the prevalence of Hepatitis B in Kenyan children using data from a series of hepatitis B markers and later evaluated the effectiveness of the current vaccination program.
Mediasite Presenter
1/16/2024 8:00:00 PM
Lessons from the Health Connect study: Enhancing STBBI testing and linkage-to-care for people who use drugs
Kate will present preliminary findings from the CIHR-funded Health Connect research project, based at the Hope to Health complex in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Health Connect research project aims to expand opportunities for STBBI testing and linkage to care for people who use drugs, while also examining the systemic barriers to healthcare engagement that hinder these efforts.
Presenter bio
Kate Salters (PhD, MPH) (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at UBC and a Senior Research Scientist at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. She is proud to lead an equity-focused program of epidemiological and health services research that aims to improve health services and health outcomes in the context of intersecting public health crises.
Learning objectives:
· To deepen understanding of the barriers to STBBI testing and treatment in the context of the DTES
· To deepen understanding of the potential role of dried-blood spot testing for STBBI testing
BC CDC Presenter
9/23/2025 7:00:00 PM
LGBTQ2 Equity through Public Health Policy and Practice
Presenter: Travis Salway is an Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches and conducts research in affiliation with the BCCDC, the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity, and the Community-Based Research Centre. Through research, community networking, and public health collaboration, Travis works to describe patterns of unjust and avoidable harms to sexual and gender minority populations (i.e., LGBTQ2 people) and then identify policies and practices that can prevent these harms. Travis holds a Michael Smith Foundation Scholar Award (2019-2024). He has worked at and with the BCCDC in various capacities since 2008.
Summary: In 2019, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health undertook a historic four-month study to understand why, despite decades of incremental legal protections and improved social attitudes in Canada, LGBTQ2 people continue to face a substantially higher burden of poor health outcomes than our heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. In this talk, I will attempt to answer this question, presenting two case studies from contemporary research with thousands of LGBTQ2 people living in Canada. The first case study concerns so-called conversion therapy—organized attempts to deny or suppress LGBTQ2 identities—and the recent efforts of the Canadian government to ban these practices. The second concerns the role of public health in connecting LGBTQ2 people to accessible and safe mental health supports. I suggest that we need comprehensive, public health-led or supported strategies that affirm LGBTQ2 lives across the life-course; and, while we are waiting for the long-term benefits of these strategies (i.e., health equity for LGBTQ2 people), we need tailored secondary prevention strategies to address the elevated rates of anxiety, depression, suicide, and substance use that this population experiences.
BC CDC Presenters
2/9/2021 8:00:00 PM
Measuring Multimorbidity: A Multi-Faceted Approach in BC
Presenter: Dr. Jennifer Ferris (she/her) is a postdoctoral CIHR Health Systems Impact Fellow at the Gerontology Research Center at SFU, doing embedded research with the BCCDC Data and Analytics Services and the BC Observatory for Population and Public Health with Dr. Kate Smolina. Her postdoctoral work examines chronic disease multimorbidity, with an eye to enhancing public health surveillance of multimorbidity in BC.
Summary: Chronic disease research and surveillance have historically operated with a single disease lens. However, chronic diseases often do not occur in isolation; when two or more diseases develop in an individual this state is called “multimorbidity”. The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive approach to measuring multimorbidity in the BC population using linked administrative data from the BC Chronic Disease Registry and BC Cancer Registry. This presentation will describe the analytic approaches taken to analyzing patterns of disease co-occurrence in multimorbidity, including disease counts, disease combinations, and a network-based disease clustering analysis.
Mediasite Presenter
6/4/2024 7:00:00 PM
Metabolomics for the diagnosis of infectious diseases
Summary: Although molecular testing demonstrates high test performance and represents the standard of care for diagnosis of several infectious diseases, diagnostic gaps remain including high cost, high complexity and inability to differentiate active infection from colonization. These limitations have surfaced actively in the application of respiratory virus testing. These viruses infect respiratory epithelial cells, where they may induce metabolite alterations in the host. There is significant interest in leveraging alternative approaches such as metabolomics (small molecules) and proteomics (proteins) to address remaining gaps. This presentation will provide an introduction to metabolomics testing, draw on the current evidence base of metabolomics for infectious diseases applications, and present early findings for the diagnosis of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 via untargeted and targeted metabolomics approaches.
Bio: Dr. Catherine Hogan is a medical microbiologist and infectious diseases physician with a passion for innovative diagnostic methods. She completed post-doctoral training at Stanford University, where she developed and optimized diagnostic methods for infectious diseases. During this time, she led a multidisciplinary team that completed proof-of-concept work demonstrating the successful adaptation of a novel and universal metabolomics method combined with machine learning for infectious diseases diagnostics. She joined the BC Centre for Disease Control in February 2021, where she is now working on extending this research program.
BC CDC Presenters
11/1/2022 7:00:00 PM
Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 Serological Responses During Pregnancy – Implications for Pregnant and General Populations
Bios:
Dr. Deborah Money is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is an associate member of both the Department of Medicine and the School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, and an affiliate member of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Science, at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Previously, Dr. Money was the Executive Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at UBC from 2006 to 2020, the inaugural Executive Director of the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI), and Vice-President, Research, BC Women’s Hospital (2016-2006). Dr. Money was appointed to the federal COVID Immunity Task Force, the National Advisory Committee on Immunizations Working Groups on COVID vaccine in pregnancy and Influenza vaccines in pregnancy, the WHO working group on COVID in pregnancy, the Global Prospective Metaanalysis on COVID in pregnancy. She is past chair and current member of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada Infection in pregnancy committee and recently appointed to the International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology Infections in Pregnancy committee.
Dr. Inna Sekirov is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a Medical Microbiologist and Mycobacteriology Laboratory Program Head at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Sekirov has co-led the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 serological testing at the BCCDC PHL and is actively involved in a variety of research projects investigating the serological responses to SARS-CoV-2; among them utilizing the residual antenatal serum samples for population level SARS-CoV-2 serosurveillance.
Summary:
Learning objectives:
To review the overall COVID-19 Canadian antenatal seroprevalence project
To share the approach and data on the BC serosurveillance approach
To share data on immune responses in pregnancy and transplacental and breast milk antibody transfer
BC CDC Presenters
11/8/2022 8:00:00 PM
Mystery hepatitis of unknown origin in children
Summary: This presentation will include a summary of the epidemiology of the mystery hepatitis, discussion of possible hypotheses, planned international investigations, as well as the role of public health in BC.
Presenter: Dr. Mayank Singal is the physician lead for enteric, vector-borne, and zoonotic diseases at the BCCDC. He is the medical lead for investigation of severe hepatitis of unknown etiology. In the past, he has led numerous local and provincial outbreak investigations as well as the development of guidelines for control and prevention of communicable diseases, including rabies and COVID-19.
BC CDC Presenters
5/17/2022 7:00:00 PM
Our Seafood WATCH in a changing climate
Summary:
WATCH – We All Take Care of the Harvest – is an Indigenous led seafood and climate change project coordinated by the First Nations Health Authority. Partnering with BCCDC and many other agencies we are striving to enable seafood sovereignty for Pacific coastal communities reliant on seafoods. The project, initially focused on the threats of marine biotoxins and creating monitoring and climate adaptation plans, has evolved in many ways. Community of Practice discussions within Indigenous communities and with other experts have led the project in novel directions.
Presenter:
Holly Clermont is a social scientist, registered professional biologist, and lead of the We All Take Care of the Harvest seafood and climate change project at First Nations Health Authority. She is passionate about engagement, climate change adaptation, conservation, ecosystem resilience, Indigenous knowledge, history and de-colonization.
Jordan Brubacher is an interdisciplinary scientist whose background spans ecology, earth systems and environmental health. He is privileged to be serving as the environmental health scientist in the WATCH Project to assist the community monitors with their data and mapping needs.
Lorraine McIntyre is a food safety and environmental health scientist who has been working for BCCDC for over 30 years. She is pleased to be part of the BCCDC team assisting Indigenous communities in addressing seafood safety through WATCH and other projects.
Mediasite Presenter
2/13/2024 8:00:00 PM
Overdose, health equity and prescribed safer supply in the time of pandemic
Summary: Overdose continues to be an ongoing public health emergency, accounting for over 70,000 years of life lost in 2020. In this presentation we will review recent trends in overdose with an emphasis on the impact of the pandemic on persons who use substances, including widening health inequities experienced by First Nations peoples in BC. The presentation will also review recent findings from an ongoing CIHR and MSFHR-funded evaluation on prescribed safer supply initiatives that were launched in March 2020.
Presenters:
Dr. Amanda Slaunwhite is a Senior Scientist and the lead of the Provincial Overdose Cohort at the BCCDC. She is an adjunct professor in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC.
Louise Meilleur is the Director of Health Surveillance for the First Nations Health Authority.
Dr. Heather Palis is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the BCCDC’s Provincial Overdose Cohort team and in the Department of Psychiatry at UBC.
BC CDC Presenters
11/16/2021 8:00:00 PM
Preclinical studies of a protein subunit vaccine for COVID-19
Presenter: Dr. Robert Brunham is the head of the UBC-CDC Vaccine Research Laboratory at BCCDC and a professor emeritus of medicine at UBC. Until 2014, he was also the executive and scientific director of BCCDC.
Summary: A COVID vaccine initiative was launched in July at UBC and BCCDC to search for a protein subunit vaccine. An interim report of the strategy taken and progress made will be given.
BC CDC Presenters
12/8/2020 8:00:00 PM
Pre-existing immunity against SARS-CoV-2: What to make of the data?
SARS-CoV-2 caused an exceptionally high number of deaths and disability in a very short period of time worldwide. In contrast, infections in most results in mild disease. While age, sex, auto-antibodies (in a small proportion of people) and co-morbidities clearly modulate disease risk, we still don’t know much about the reasons for the broad range of COVID-19 clinical presentations, aside from a main role of age. Multiple research groups around the world have reported pre-existing antibody or T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 in absence of prior infection, likely to previous exposures to endemic coronaviruses. In this lecture, I will discuss some of this evidence, what to make of it (or not), and present an ongoing study to determine the impact of pre-existing immune reactivity on responses to a single SARS-CoV-2 vaccine dose in virus-naïve individuals.
Dr. Pascal Lavoie is a Clinician-Scientist, Associate professor at the University of British Columbia and staff Neonatologist at BC Women’s Hospital. He completed medical school, and a PhD in human immunology at McGill University, a pediatric residency at Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal, and a fellowship in Neonatal/Perinatal Medicine at UBC, where he joined as full-time Faculty in 2008. His core research focuses on the developing immune system in early life. However, with the pandemic, a major focus of his research was re-oriented towards understanding immunity to SARS-CoV-2 at the population level, as well as two COVID-19 Immunity Task Force-funded studies on the 1) impact of pre-existing immunity on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine responses, and 2) SARS-CoV-2 infections within schools.
BC CDC Presenters
6/15/2021 7:00:00 PM
Preventing childhood asthma and allergy: the neglected impacts of antibiotic stewardship and human milk exposure in infants
Increasing evidence suggests that antibiotic exposure in infancy increases a child’s risk of developing asthma and other allergic conditions later in childhood by altering the gut microbial environment which is important for developing healthy immunological pathways. Interestingly, exposure to human milk has been shown to largely mitigate this increased risk of asthma in infants receiving antibiotics, by restoring the diversity of the infant’s gut microbiota. These questions, however, have not yet been explored across an entire population of children. In this Grand Rounds, Dr. Lishman will discuss the growing body of evidence around this mechanistic pathway and will present the BC results from a retrospective cohort study conducted across BC and Manitoba exploring infant antibiotic use and childhood atopic disease outcomes.
Dr. Lishman has spent the last eight years working in antimicrobial stewardship, completing her PhD at Imperial College London in 2019 and a UBC postdoctoral fellowship supervised by Dr. David Patrick at BCCDC in 2023. She specialises in cohort study design and the use of routinely-collected data for disease risk modelling. She will be joining the BCCDC as the Senior Scientist in Community Antimicrobial Stewardship.
Learning objectives:
Learn about early life risk factors related to the development of asthma and atopic disease in children
Gain a basic understanding of the administrative data landscape in British Columbia and how these datasets link together
Learn about disease risk modelling methodologies and how to investigate potential sources of bias using sensitivity analyses
Mediasite Presenter
10/24/2023 7:00:00 PM
Reduce, Rebalance, and Replenish: Investigating the infant microbiota to minimize antibiotics-associated asthma risk
Presenters:
Darlene Dai, MSc: I have an MSc in Statistics from UBC and 7-years of work experience as a biostatistician in discovering genomic biomarkers of cancer, heart, and lung disease in academia and industry. I am currently pursuing my PhD degree in Experimental Medicine at UBC under the co-supervision of Drs. Stuart Turvey and Raymond Ng. My research focuses on exploring and understanding the associations across infant gut microbiome, environmental factors and pediatric asthma. By using the CHILD Cohort Study, my PhD project aims to develop a precision health approach empowered by “omics” to predict, and ultimately prevent early-onset asthma. Please reach out if you would like to learn more about me and my research!
Charisse Petersen, PhD: I earned a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from The University of Utah in 2017 interrogating immune-microbiota interactions within the mammalian gut. I continued this work as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Brett Finlay’s lab at UBC with a specific focus on early-life microbiota maturation and immune development. I joined Dr. Stuart Turvey’s lab in 2020, and I have to say that the best part of my job is working with studies like the CHILD study to shine a light on all the wonderful things that our microbiota does to support infant development. The more that we know, the better we can be at protecting these important bacteria in order to keep infants and children healthy.
Summary:
Early antibiotic exposure is linked to persistent disruption of the infant gut microbiome and subsequent elevated pediatric asthma risk. Breastfeeding acts as a primary modulator of the gut microbiome during early life, however, its impact on asthma development has remained unclear. We harnessed the CHILD cohort to interrogate the influence of breastfeeding on antibiotic-associated asthma risk (n=2,521) and coupled this with metagenomic profiling of the infant gut microbiome in a subset of participants (n=1,338). Children who took antibiotics without breastfeeding had 3-fold higher asthma odds, while there was no such association in children who received antibiotics while breastfeeding. This benefit was associated with widespread ‘re-balancing’ of taxonomic and functional components of the infant microbiome. Functional changes associated with asthma protection were linked to enriched Bifidobacterium longum subspecies infantis colonization. Subsequent interrogation of human milk oligosaccharide (HMO) composition from paired maternal human milk samples for 561 of these infants revealed a selection of HMOs that were positively associated with both B. infantis and these broader functional changes. Our data suggest that breastfeeding and antibiotics exert opposing effects on the infant microbiome and that breastfeeding enrichment of B. infantis may mitigate antibiotic-associated asthma risk.
Mediasite Presenter
5/16/2023 7:00:00 PM
Respiratory and patient reported outcomes after hospitalisation with COVID-19 and implications for follow-up
Summary:
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to over 86 million confirmed cases and nearly 2 million deaths globally. There is growing evidence that patients can have persistent symptoms and physiologic sequelae well after COVID-19 recovery, supporting the need for short and long term patient follow-up. In this presentation, we will discuss the development of the Post-COVID-19 Respiratory Clinic (PCRC) at St. Paul's Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital and review the research it has generated including studies looking at respiratory and patient reported outcomes after COVID-19. We will then discuss the implications these findings have on the long-term management of patients recovering from COVID-19.
Presenters:
Dr. Alyson Wong completed her core medical training at the University of British Columbia (UBC), followed by a Respirology fellowship at Dalhousie University. She subsequently returned to UBC where she completed a 2-year Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) clinical and research fellowship and Master of Health Science. Dr. Wong is currently a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Medicine at UBC and postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation. She works as a respirologist in the Interstitial Lung Disease program at St. Paul's Hospital.
Dr. Aditi Shah is part of Faculty of Medicine, Division of Respirology at University of British Columbia. She completed her training in Respiratory medicine at University of Saskatchewan and has received clinical and research training in Sleep Medicine and Neuromuscular respiratory disease at University of British Columbia. She is currently working as a Respirologist at Vancouver General Hospital and in Sleep Medicine department at University of British Columbia Hospital.
BC CDC Presenters
1/19/2021 8:00:00 PM
SARS-CoV-2 variants: detection, characterization, and impacts on outcomes
Summary: The BCCDC Public Health Laboratory is equipped with a wide range of tools to deploy in pandemic responses. Molecular, genomic, culture and serological analyses linked to exposure, vaccination and patient outcome data can inform strategies to prevent disease and control spread and transmission. Here we share data and novel methods from research projects that employed laboratory data to help respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Presenters:
Dr. Agatha Jassem, PhD, D(ABMM), FCCM, is a Clinical Microbiologist and the Program Head of the Virology Lab at the BC Centre for Disease Control Public Health Laboratory. She is also a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Jassem oversees diagnostic testing and her research focuses on evaluating new strategies for detecting and charactering viruses and viral exposures.
Dr. Natalie Prystajecky works as a microbiologist at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory (PHL), where she oversees two laboratories: Environmental Microbiology and the Molecular and Microbial Genomics. Dr. Prystajecky is also a Clinical Associate at the University of British Columbia. In her clinical roles and research endeavours, she uses emerging technologies such as genomics to improve routine surveillance and outbreak investigations, including for SARS-CoV-2.
Dr. Hind Sbihi, PhD, B.eng, is a Senior Scientist in the Data & Analytics Services, supporting the Public Health Laboratory, at the BC Centre for Disease Control and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health. She is leading the integration and reporting of laboratory diagnostic and genomic data with Ministry of Health and Health Authorities data for real-time reporting on COVID-19.
BC CDC Presenters
2/8/2022 8:00:00 PM
Second Dose Deferral to Extend COVID-19 Vaccine Coverage: A Review of the Evidence
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 have been increasing since mid-September in BC and as of January 2021 remain elevated. Two mRNA vaccines have been authorized for use in Canada but vaccine supply will be limited through the first quarter of 2021, requiring strategic management to address scarcity during a period of heightened need. To extend protective vaccine coverage to as many priority group members as possible, population risk assessment and response require consideration of second dose deferral. This talk will review the evidence and benefit-risk analysis underpinning decisions to defer the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Danuta Skowronski leads the Influenza and Emerging Respiratory Pathogens Team at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) where she informs surveillance, research and program/policy recommendations for influenza, and more recently COVID-19, prevention and control. She is credited with co-development of the test-negative design, a methodology now used globally to monitor seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness. With more than 170 scientific publications, Dr. Skowronski’s pioneering epidemiological work related to influenza vaccine will also help shape COVID-19 vaccine monitoring strategies.
BC CDC Presenters
1/26/2021 8:00:00 PM
Socioeconomic, demographic, and health predictors of drug overdose in the BC Provincial Overdose Cohort
In 2019, there were there were 24,166 overdose ambulance calls (~66/day) in BC, and in the Vancouver Coastal Health Region 39% of all ambulance calls were for an overdose. In 2020, 1,767 British Columbians died of an illicit drug overdose (~5/day) vs. approx. 957 from COVID-19 (~3/day). Harm reduction has certainly helped but is clearly not enough to keep things from getting worse. Stopping the overdose crisis will require improving our understanding of substance use disorders and risk factors for overdose that can be used to develop effective preventative measures. In collaboration with Dr. Amanda Slaunwhite at the BC Centre for Disease Control, we are investigating the socioeconomic, demographic, and health determinants of overdose using data on a total of 987,406 individuals from the BC Provincial Overdose Cohort and a 20% sample from the general BC population. In this talk, I will share some preliminary results from an overdose prediction model capable of predicting 80% of overdose cases per year and which identifies vulnerable segments of the BC population for whom additional interventions and supports may have the most impact.
Presenter: Dr. Craig Hutton, PhD, is a Data Scientist with the BC Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction and a lead investigator in the province’s Data Innovation Program. In his research, Dr. Hutton applies statistical programming and machine learning techniques to large administrative datasets to profile vulnerable BC populations and guide policy development.
BC CDC Presenters
4/26/2022 7:00:00 PM
The 2019-nCoV Novel Coronavirus – what we know and what we’re finding out
Dr. Inna Sekirov joined the team of BCCDC PHL Medical Microbiologists in 2017. She is the program head for TB/Mycobacteriology laboratory and has a particular interest in molecular/genomics-based diagnostics and epidemiology.
Dr. Natalie Prystajecky is the program head for the Environmental Microbiology program and co-leads the Molecular and Microbial Genomics program at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory. She is also a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at UBC. Dr. Prystajecky’s research expertise includes genomics and molecular diagnostics. She uses emerging technologies to improve routine surveillance and outbreak investigations for pathogens.
Dr. Mel Krajden is the medical director of the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory. He is also the medical head of hepatitis at BCCDC and is involved in the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort. His laboratory research involves the application of molecular techniques to diagnose viruses, assess correlates between infection and clinical disease, use molecular techniques to monitor antiviral efficacy and track microbial infections for epidemiological purposes.
BC CDC Presenters
2/4/2020 8:00:00 PM
The seven-year emergency: Unregulated drug poisoning events as a continuing public health threat in British Columbia
Summary: Drs. Slaunwhite and Palis will present data on drivers of the ongoing unregulated drug poisoning emergency. Conceptualizations of substance use, substance use disorder and risk of unregulated drug poisoning will be discussed. Analysis from the Provincial Overdose Cohort will be presented, to demonstrate populations for whom unregulated drug poisoning is elevated, including people with recent criminal legal system involvement. Interventions that can be introduced to reduce risk, including (prescribed) safer supply and peer-led interventions will be discussed.
Presenter bios:
Dr. Amanda Slaunwhite is an Assistant Professor (Partner) in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC and a Senior Scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control. Dr. Slaunwhite holds a MSFHR Scholar Award, and is the co-Director of the Canadian Collaborative for Prison Health and Education (CCPHE). She has over a decade of experience working with administrative health data in BC, New Brunswick and the US on topics related to overdose, substance use and mental health. Dr. Slaunwhite actively partners with people with lived/living experience of substance use, overdose or incarceration as part of her research program, including the co-development and co-leadership of research projects. These projects include PREVAIL, in a partnership with Unlocking the Gates Non-Profit Society and Chee Mamuk, which provides peer support, cellular phones, and care and medicine bundles to people leaving correctional centres in BC who are at-risk of overdose mortality.
Dr. Heather Palis is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and BC Centre for Disease Control. Her postdoctoral research seeks to investigate recent interventions introduced in response to the overdose crisis in British Columbia (e.g. expanded opioid agonist treatment, pharmaceutical alternatives to the toxic drug supply), with a focus on the impact of these interventions on people who have been recently incarcerated. Her research uses administrative health and corrections records available in the Provincial Overdose Cohort held at the BC Centre for Disease Control, which offers the most comprehensive collection of records on fatal and non-fatal overdose events available in Canada. Heather’s postdoctoral research is supported by an MSFHR Research Trainee award, CIHR Fellowship, and UBC Institute of Mental Health Marshall Fellowship.
Summary: Cumulative impacts refer to overlapping and persistent legacies of environmental change on ecosystems, communities and population health over time. While once primarily within the sole purview of impact assessment practitioners assessing major projects (e.g. dams, smelters, transmission lines), there is now growing recognition that cumulative environmental impacts of multiple land uses and climate change drive broader societal changes with implications for the health of individuals and communities. In light of this expanding discourse, new methodologies are required to quantify the totality of impact across social-ecological systems to support local and regional sustainability goals. Drawing from three regional case studies (Alberta Foothills, Northern Ontario, and British Columbia), this presentation presents an overview of a novel cumulative effects screening tool capable of merging environmental, socioeconomic and health data into a singular assessment architecture to quantify cumulative impacts across time and space. Opportunities and limitations associated with the tool’s utilization will be discussed, as well as future research opportunities to help better understand the relationship between cumulative environmental change and corresponding implications for communities and human health.
Mediasite Presenter
4/11/2023 7:00:00 PM
Thinking beyond resistance: assessing the knock-on effects of antibiotic stewardship - NOV 26th Grand Rounds
Talk summary: Dr Lishman will present the results of her PhD thesis which investigated the effect of antibiotic prescribing guideline adherence for urinary tract infections in primary care on the risk of subsequent UTI-related bloodstream infections. She will also share an overview of her current study plans looking at infant antibiotic exposure and childhood asthma and atopic disease risk. She will discuss how utilizing the power of population-based administrative data and data linkage allows for such large-scale studies to be run and how all of these projects fall within the realm of broadening our assessment of antibiotic stewardship and “thinking beyond resistance”.
Bio: Having completed her MSc at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Control of Infectious Diseases and her PhD at Imperial College London in Clinical Medicine Research, Hannah has come back to her hometown of Vancouver to take up a UBC postdoctoral position in the Community Antimicrobial Stewardship team at BCCDC. She has spent the last several years working with UK national datasets to model the effects of antibiotic stewardship on subsequent downstream infection risk.
BC CDC Presenters
11/26/2019 8:00:00 PM
Understanding Public Health Challenges within Muslim Communities
Presenter: Dr. Rania Awaad, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine where she is the Director of the Stanford Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab as well Stanford University's Affiliate Chaplain. She also serves as the Associate Division Chief for Public Mental Health and Population Sciences as well as the Section Co-Chief of Diversity and Cultural Mental Health. In addition, she is a faculty member of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. She pursued her psychiatric residency training at Stanford where she also completed a postdoctoral clinical research fellowship with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). As a nationally recognized leader in Muslim mental health, Dr. Awaad has been invited by Presidents Obama and Biden, the CDC, HHS and SAMHSA to present her work at national convenings in DC. She has pioneered by establishing the first Muslim Mental Health Community Advisory Board (BAMMH CAB) in the US. Dr. Awaad has also established multiple Muslim mental health clinics as well as custom-tailored clinical and educational training programs for clinicians, religious and community leaders to address the mental health needs of Muslim communities.
Summary: Understanding the nuances among different communities is imperative for tailoring public health interventions to diverse populations. This presentation will draw upon research developed within the Stanford Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab to explore the intersection of public health and mental health within Muslim communities. Additionally, Dr. Rania Awaad will delve into critical topics such as suicide, stigma, and contemporary issues facing Muslims today, as well as offer insights into promoting mental well-being within Muslim communities.
Mediasite Presenter
4/23/2024 7:00:00 PM
Unintended Consequences of the COVID-19 Response
Summary: Many measures were implemented to prevent and slow the spread the COVID-19, such as physical distancing, suspension of in-class learning, temporary closures of non-essential businesses, and limiting size of large gatherings to 50 people. While these measures were effective in limiting the spread of COVID-19, there were many unintended consequences of these measures. The presentation will outline the work to identify, prioritize, monitor and report on the unintended consequences that have occurred.
Presenters: Dr. Jason Wong is a Public Health and Preventive Medicine Physician at BCCDC and Clinical Assistant Professor in the UBC School of Population & Public Health. Dr. Brian Emerson is the acting Deputy Provincial Health Officer for BC. Dr. Jason Wong and Dr. Brian Emerson are co-chairs of the Unintended Consequences Working Group.
BC CDC Presenters
9/22/2020 7:00:00 PM
We don’t need a better rat trap: Reconceptualising municipal rat management
Presenter/summary: Michael Joseph Lee, PhD, is an environmental epidemiologist in Environmental Health Services at the BCCDC. He has been involved in urban rat research with the Vancouver Rat Project since 2015, including studying disease ecology and the impacts of pest control interventions on the prevalence of zoonotic pathogens. In this BCCDC Grand Rounds, Michael will present a project designed to understand the state of municipal rat management with a view towards providing recommendations for cities seeking to develop or improve their own rat management strategies.
BC CDC Presenters
11/15/2022 8:00:00 PM
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