Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute strives to support and promote excellence in health research. The annual VCHRI Investigator Awards are an opportunity to recognize the efforts of health investigators through peer-reviewed salary support awards. The awards enable investigators to reduce their clinical practice commitments and build their research capacity to expand the possibilities of improving health research. They are supported by VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation and TD Grants in Medical Excellence. 

The 2017 VCHRI Investigator Awards recipients are:  

A made-in-Vancouver group-based language therapy approach that can cut costs and wait times may also rival one-to-one therapy for effectiveness. The unique group approach—called Language Fun Story Time (LFST)—uses the power of books and peer modelling for children who are slower to develop language.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading killer of women worldwide. But most research, and the clinical evidence for treatment, is based on studies of men. That’s a problem, since it turns out that women have very different treatment responses and disease progression of CVD than men.

Top researchers in blood disease have a new home within Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI). “We know we have excellent, high-quality research but it is wonderful to get this validation and recognition,” says Hematology Research Program (HRP) director Dr. Agnes Lee.  HRP has received official program designation at VCHRI.

Gone is the stigma around trying to find love online and surprisingly, older adults are diving into the online dating pool at a significantly fast pace¹. A recently published study in the Canadian Journal on Aging, co-authored by Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist Dr. Ben Mortenson, found a unique opportunity in the expanding online dating world of older adults to gain their insights about what successful aging looks like.

Doctors strive to be as objective as possible in their approach to patient care. But, like all of us, doctors have unconscious biases about other people. Unconscious bias is an ancient survival skill humans developed in order to quickly determine if a stranger is a potential threat.

It’s no secret that music can be a powerful emotional connector for people. From lullabies for babies, to dance songs on the radio, music moves people in ways that few other art forms can. For people in psychological distress, music can be a soothing and comforting form of therapy. That’s why Richmond Hospital’s Psychiatric Inpatient Unit makes music therapy available to its patients. Angie Ji, an accredited music therapist at Richmond Hospital, says the unique advantage of music therapy is that it is intrinsically beautiful. 

The development process behind a new app to help sedentary people get moving shows how unique partnerships between researchers, consumers, and patient groups can lead to innovative health research. Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) scientists Dr. Linda Li and Dr.