A new interactive app is helping Canadian workers with clinical depression better connect with their mental health care providers to track the status of their mental health and mood before, during, and after treatment. Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, especially in working-age adults. 

In Canada, as many as seven in ten people with clinical depression continue to work, despite struggling with their symptoms.

Individuals wanting to learn more about how practical research can inform real changes in complex and evolving health systems would be well advised to attend this year’s Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation (C2E2) Annual Lecture. Guest speaker Dr. Robert Reid is presenting a talk, “Moving Towards the Learning Health Care System: Integrating Research into Practice and Policy”, which will be about the Learning Healthcare System – a strategy posited to rapidly improve quality of care, health outcomes, and reduce costs. 

Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute and Island Health Authority researcher Dr. E. Paul Zehr is taking knowledge translation to a whole new level, using pop culture superheroes to make life sciences understandable and exciting for young minds.

Even though British Columbia emergency departments want to get pain medications to patients in need as soon as possible, barriers in doing so have resulted in some patients not getting them quick enough, according to a Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) study currently underway.

Taking medications per doctor’s orders is challenging for most people. The task proves substantially more challenging when the language of the doctor or health care provider is different from that of the patient. Effective communication between health care professionals and patients, in particular among ethno-cultural communities, has shown to help with self-management of chronic diseases.

VCH Research Institute research team CREST.BD (the Collaborative RESearch Team to study psychosocial issues in Bipolar Disorder) has experienced firsthand the benefits of using social media to share their research and knowledge about the mental health condition. CREST.BD started Tweeting in August 2011 and as of August 2014, Twitonomy estimated that their Twitter activities have a potential reach of more than 1.9 million Twitter users, and followers of @CREST_BD have more than doubled in the past 12 months.

When British Columbia changed its impaired driving law in 2010 to include harsher fines, penalties, and roadside suspensions, the province received as much criticism as it did praise for the law being substantially more immediate and severe. A new study led by Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute researcher Dr. Jeffrey Brubacher found that the new law’s stronger penalties have made B.C. roads safer and have significantly reduced crash-related fatalities.