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.
While most people dream of retiring one day, the reality of retired life for many older adults includes a myriad of later life hardships, such as financial stress, relationship losses, identity crises, social isolation, resurfacing of past traumas, and conflicts with adult children.
A unique group psychotherapy program at Richmond Hospital, part of the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute research community, is helping older adults deal with such personal historical and present-day issues causing depression and anxiety.
Earlier this year, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) launched its inaugural Innovation and Translational Research Awards competition to support research projects led by Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) care professionals and researchers. The competition’s objectives are to fund research that brings new knowledge into practice and/or policy, to take research outcomes to the implementation stage, and to create commercial opportunities from pre-existing research outcomes. This year’s recipients demonstrate these objectives in their work.
Within the next 20 years, ovarian cancer rates in B.C. are projected to drop by as much as 40% thanks to a cancer prevention initiative developed by research group OVCARE. Their initiative has successfully changed B.C.’s gynecological surgery practices and is expected to reduce rates of the most lethal form of ovarian cancer among low-risk women in the province.
A comprehensive survivorship program by the Vancouver Prostate Centre (VPC) is helping individuals, couples, and families endure not only the diagnosis of, and treatment for, prostate cancer, but also the unanticipated physical and psychological challenges that come with prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment.
As one of Canada’s top-funded research institutions, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute continues to offer numerous opportunities for growth and advancement to our more than 1,500 personnel in our research centres, programs, and research areas. Our annual Investigator Awards are peer-reviewed salary support awards for investigators located at VGH, UBC Hospital and G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre who want to move from clinical practice to research.
A groundbreaking discovery by researchers at The Vancouver Prostate Centre (VPC), a Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) centre, is giving scientists unprecedented levels of accuracy in seeing how patient-specific prostate (tumors) respond to drug therapies or develop drug resistance.
The Centre for Clinical Epidemiology (C2E2) – one of the major research centres under Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) – officially launches its revamped website in January 2014. The new site offers better communication with the larger research community and highlights C2E2’s dedication to research, training, and knowledge translation that delivers the most effective health care to British Columbians.
Although managing chronic disease can be done best by adjusting daily habits, making those adjustments without proper supports often proves challenging. A study at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) demonstrates the positive effects of providing such supports in the form of a cook book, cooking classes, and fitness instruction to patients with chronic kidney disease.
