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Research is a more recent addition to the remit of UBC Health. The related objectives articulated in the new UBC Health strategic plan, Better Health Together, build on UBC’s existing strength in health research, which spans disciplines, faculties, and campuses.
UBC Health focuses on the growing need for research collaborations that address the increasingly complex and interconnected problems facing society. To address these complex challenges, we will provide a variety of supports to cultivate newly developing ideas, ambitions, and teams while leveraging and extending existing institutional expertise, relationships, and infrastructure at UBC.
Over the next five years, UBC Health will work to advance three strategic objectives related to the interdisciplinary research core area.
Community of practice
We will foster an active community of health research practice and mentorship that supports and connects health scholars and students.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the need to understand some of the detriments and experiences of health and wellbeing in our society. UBC Health sees this inflection point as an opportunity to convene collaborators to define important questions, design research programs, and engage with policymakers and communities. In the coming weeks, UBC Health will launch Health After 2020—an initiative that will support UBC faculty interested in starting or extending a collaborative relationship around this theme with a scholar or collaborator outside UBC.
The partnership between the Okanagan campus and UBC Health in advancing the Disaggregated Data Dialogue Series demonstrates the kind of cross-campus collaborations that will be enhanced as the objectives in the new UBC Health strategic plan are implemented.
Related to this objective, the Disaggregated Data Dialogue Series convenes researchers and other colleagues from both campuses as well as community members for focused discussions about the responsibilities of researchers and UBC as an institution around the collection and use of disaggregated data. The first two sessions of the series built a commitment across the health research community at UBC to continue the conversation. We are working with colleagues to identify further areas for dialogue, including what individual researchers can do and how to integrate the community voice.
“The partnership between the Okanagan campus and UBC Health in advancing the Disaggregated Data Dialogue Series demonstrates the kind of cross-campus collaborations that will be enhanced as the objectives in the new UBC Health strategic plan are implemented,” says Michael Burgess, Associate Provost, Strategy in the Office of the Provost and Vice President at UBC Okanagan.
New research collaborations
We will stimulate and support new health research collaborations.
By providing seed funding through the Health Innovation Funding Investment (HIFI) Awards, UBC Health will facilitate interdisciplinary health research. HIFI is intended to catalyze cross-faculty and cross-campus research at UBC’s Vancouver and Okanagan campuses. During the inaugural competition in 2020, we received 36 research proposals across both campuses. Six projects were selected to receive funding to develop, undertake, or translate innovative health-related research. We are now working towards the next call for HIFI proposals.
The HIFI funding facilitates the initiation of a new collaboration to tackle an interdisciplinary problem with clear public health relevance.
“The HIFI funding facilitates the initiation of a new collaboration to tackle an interdisciplinary problem with clear public health relevance,” says Dr. Lindsey Richardson, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts, Research Scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use, and one of the recipients of the inaugural HIFI awards. “As we continue to see how COVID-19 has exacerbated pre-existing inequities, our HIFI award is supporting an examination of the multiple potential pathways by which toxic drug poisonings have increased under COVID-19. Our research project draws on different sources of data, prioritizes the lived and living experience of community members, and seeks to provide evidence to support policymakers in their response to the pandemic.”
Data infrastructure
We will contribute to provincial efforts to develop an integrated health research data infrastructure.
“UBC Health is both creating new opportunities for research across faculties and campuses and raising awareness of new data and training resources for researchers,” says Kim McGrail, Director of Research at UBC Health. “We will be working with partners inside and outside UBC to ensure we develop infrastructure that supports the innovative ideas and aspirations of researchers.”
More information
- Better Health Together: UBC Health Strategic Plan 2021-2026
- Strategic plan May 12 launch video
- Strategic plan article series
Posted May 13, 2021
