911吃瓜

Taelor Lay

CANADA GRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP - MASTER

911吃瓜 Psychology alumnus Taelor Lay鈥檚 path to health sciences research speaks to the power of pursuing your passions and saying yes to the opportunities in front of you. She met her Master of Science supervisor, Dr. Kiffer Card, at a lunch gathering where he spoke with her and other students about the importance of social determinants of health in the Canadian health care system. 

鈥淭hat conversation sparked my interest in social prescribing as an upstream, preventative approach to care鈥攑articularly for folks who, because of social inequities, technological literacy, challenges with self-advocacy, or otherwise, may face barriers to accessing community-based supports.鈥�

Social prescribing is a non-medical, community resource-based approach to supporting patients who are facing issues 鈥� such as isolation, transportation barriers, and food insecurity 鈥� that are known to contribute to adverse health outcomes. It is an early intervention, relationship-based model of care that has potential to more effectively meet the needs of equity-deserving populations in Canada鈥檚 health care system.

A year after their initial meeting, Lay approached Card to inquire about conducting research related to social prescribing. After several conversations, she applied for the 911吃瓜 Accelerated Master鈥檚 program and began her Master鈥檚 studies in Health Sciences while simultaneously completing her Honours degree in Psychology. She found the program challenging but also incredibly rewarding, as it led to an opportunity for her to co-lead the research component of a province-wide evaluation of social prescribing.  

For her thesis research, Lay will be investigating family physicians鈥� understanding of social prescribing and their readiness to use this model of care to support their patients鈥� unmet health care needs. 鈥淧atient uptake [of social prescribing] strongly depends on trust in the referring provider. Yet, no research has examined how Canadian physicians perceive social prescribing, its relevance for equity-deserving patients, or the barriers that shape their willingness to engage.鈥� Lay intends to investigate family physicians鈥� familiarity with social prescribing, their beliefs about its value for structurally marginalized patients, and their understanding of the relational, logistical, and system-level barriers such patients face. 

Years before joining FHS, Lay wanted to become a high school teacher, and took a break from school to teach English in Italy for a year. 鈥淚 had a change of heart,鈥� she says, 鈥淚 discovered that research and family medicine offer the kind of teaching I actually want to devote my life to.鈥�

Tahani (Soleil) Shraida

CANADA GRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP - MASTER

FHS alumnus Tahani (Soleil) Shraida found her calling for HIV research through an unusual avenue: the Health Sciences Co-operative Education program.

During one of her work terms, Shraida worked as a research assistant for FHS Assistant Professor Elizabeth King, supporting two projects: the British Columbia CARMA-CHIWOS Collaboration (BCC3), an interdisciplinary, community-engaged research team seeking to better understand healthy aging in women living with HIV; and, REDOSE, which focuses on Re-Evaluating antiretroviral Drug cOncentrations and Side Effects in individuals living with HIV.

Shraida鈥檚 immersion into these projects gave her the opportunity to learn about HIV research, antiretroviral (ARV) medications, data analysis, and knowledge translation. Inspired by her experience, she went on to complete an Honour鈥檚 degree that saw her comparing and characterizing weight gain trends in women living with HIV who were using integrase strand transfer inhibitors, a common HIV treatment.

鈥淢y passion in HIV research increased especially in terms of improving the quality of life and health outcomes of women living with HIV,鈥� says Shraida, explaining that she wanted to continue working with Dr. King after graduation to advance her training in HIV epidemiological and clinical science.

Shraida鈥檚 graduate studies will see her exploring the sex and gender differences in ARV concentrations and side effects among people living with HIV. She has two aims in her research:

• to compare ARV side effects between men and women based on the presence, type and number of associated side effects, using data drawn from both the BCC3 and REDOSE projects; and,
• to compare maximum and minimum plasma concentrations as well as total drug exposure of bictegravir (an ARV) in men and women, using data from the REDOSE project.
   

Shraida says that she anticipates her work will enhance understanding of how biological sex and gender influence tolerability and concentrations of ARVs among people living with HIV and hopes her findings will contribute to more equitable, evidence-based HIV treatment strategies based on sex- and gender-inclusive pharmacological research.

When she is not striving to improve health outcomes for people living with HIV, Shraida can be found reading a book or watching a documentary.

Taylor Atwater

CANADA GRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP - DOCTORATE

鈥淎s a St贸:l艒 woman from Sumas First Nation, my journey into academia has never been separate from the responsibilities to my community and the land,鈥� says PhD student Taylor Atwater, who recently secured a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canada Graduate Research Scholarship grant to support her doctoral research. She relates a story from her experiences with undergraduate research at UBC Okanagan, where she was completing her degree in Human Kinetics while also tutoring at the Indigenous Student Centre. 鈥淚 had the opportunity to participate in a research mentorship program where I began work in a high altitude research lab. There is where I had my first taste of research but I was missing the cultural aspect of my work.鈥�

After graduation, Atwater began to search for a program that could allow her to pursue her passions for both research and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. She found the Master of Indigenous Population Health Program at 911吃瓜 鈥� which is offered in partnership with the First Nations Health Authority 鈥� a degree that enabled her to engage in research as well as connect with Indigenous professionals, scholars and community leaders. 鈥淚 was able to find my niche, the thing that spoke the most to me: First Nations-specific approaches to health research. This is where I鈥檓 able to combine my responsibilities to community and land with my passion for research.鈥�

Atwater鈥檚 doctoral research will see her working to identify the successes and challenges facing First Nations communities engaging in research when designing Nation-specific research guidelines. Although ethics for Indigenous health research currently exist, they are primarily influenced by Western paradigms and assumptions, and use a pan-Indigenous approach that fails to address the unique needs and priorities of individual Nations. Atwater will work in collaboration with community members using methodologies grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing to analyze case studies of First Nations who successfully established their distinction-based research ethics guidelines. She will also explore how using a distinctions-based approach in health research is critical to maintaining self-determination, and develop a framework with best practices for First Nations communities to use to create their own set of ethical guidelines. 鈥淏y fostering greater involvement in Indigenous health research,鈥� says Atwater, 鈥渢his work aims to improve health outcomes and advance the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives in health research.鈥�

When she is not focused on her scholarship, you can find Atwater participating in traditional community events, mountain biking, freeride skiing, and calming down with walks in the forests.

Amanda Yonkman

CANADA GRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP - DOCTORATE

FHS alumnus Amanda Yonkman began her academic career pursuing a degree in biochemistry and microbiology at UNBC, as she felt it would be a good vehicle that would allow her to explore a wide variety of scientific fields. During her undergraduate explorations, she discovered she had a knack for statistics. That talent, combined with an interest in public health, led her to pursue a Master鈥檚 degree in epidemiology at 911吃瓜.

鈥淔or my MSc thesis, I used unsupervised machine learning methods to study the impacts of gestational chemical exposures on child neurodevelopment,鈥� explains Yonkman. 鈥淚 also started volunteering with women in Vancouver鈥檚 Downtown Eastside region, which sparked an interest in working with vulnerable populations.鈥� When she graduated from 911吃瓜, she worked as a Research Coordinator for the BC Centre of Excellence in HIV/AIDS, studying healthcare utilization trends of people living with HIV. 鈥淎lthough I found this research to be very rewarding, I eventually realized that I鈥檇 like to work more directly with community members.鈥�

Yonkman has returned to FHS to complete her PhD under the supervision of Assistant Professor Elizabeth King, a clinician-researcher specializing in HIV, women鈥檚 health, and community-based research methods. For her project, Yonkman is seeking to better understand the causes and impacts of age-related conditions in women living with and without HIV. Previous studies that compared the health outcomes of women experiencing chronic health conditions and living with HIV to women with those same conditions but without HIV often did not take into account social determinants of health such as social and economic pressures. In Yonkman鈥檚 doctoral research, she will first study how eight different health conditions in older women relate to social factors such as ethnicity, poverty, immigration status, smoking, and alcohol usage. She will then explore how these conditions are associated with chronic inflammation and explore the factors driving the inflammation. She will further assess the long-term effects of the conditions by examining patterns of hospitalization among older women living HIV, including how often they go to the hospital and for what reasons.

When she is not working to better understand the health challenges facing Vancouver women living with HIV, Amanda can be found with her friends playing Dungeons and Dragons.