Canada’s doctors face a challenging task: help shift healthcare and health research to being more patient-oriented and do so with high levels of efficiency that safeguard the current healthcare system in which resources are already stretched. Effective knowledge translation (KT) – turning research knowledge and innovation into new strategies, action, devices, etc., that improve patient care and healthcare systems – provides the evidence needed by healthcare professionals and policy-makers to determine how to meet the challenge of delivering the best care in a cost-effective manner.

Call it the Dr. Google effect. Thanks to today’s search engines, seemingly boundless internet, and social media, people who are not medical professionals are better equipped than ever to investigate the symptoms, illnesses, and conditions that ail them. According to Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist Samantha Pollard, such availability and accessing of health-related information are partly why health care is becoming more patient-centred and shared decision-making (SDM) between patients and physicians is increasingly being supported by public health policy. 

Maple Ridge resident Rina Varley distinctly remembers the powerful feeling of relief that washed over her after talking to a psychiatric genetic counsellor from the Psychiatric Genetic Counselling Clinic about her generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) for the first time.

“I’d always wondered if trauma that I’d experienced earlier in my life had caused my GAD. Emily (the psychiatric genetic counsellor) let me know that while trauma can exacerbate GAD, it certainly doesn’t cause mental illness,” says Varley. 

A study being led by Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist Dr. Jacqueline Saw is the largest of its kind to date investigating spontaneous coronary artery dissection (or SCAD) – an under-diagnosed and poorly understood heart condition that leads to heart attacks mostly in young women who are otherwise healthy. 

Aerobic exercise hit peak popularity in the ‘80s and is now showing to be highly beneficial to people in their 80s (and in all older age groups). New research by Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose finds that 60 minutes of good old-fashioned aerobic exercise may be more potent than any pill to reduce older adults’ risk of cognitive decline due to mini-strokes.

A recent study on how everyday access to nature impacts aging provides an essential piece of the puzzle of building sustainable communities that better support growing old. The study, co-authored by a team of researchers at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, including Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) scientist and gerontologist Dr.