Q: What is your role in health research?
A: I am a graduate research assistant in the Kramer Lab at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), where we study the neurophysiology of pain.
Hobbies and other everyday activities add to our enjoyment of life, and a first-of-its-kind research study is examining whether they could also have positive health effects for the approximately one in five Canadians ages 15 and older with inflammatory arthritis.
Steveston resident Vicky Dabbs believes in giving back. Although she’s in great health, the 64-year-old semi-retired nurse has taken part in the trial of a new shingles vaccine. Dabbs feels compelled to do her part for research because she’s seen firsthand the impact shingles can have.
“I saw a lot of geriatric patients with shingles when I worked in hospitals. Many of them were quite weakened for a considerable length of time and in a lot of pain. Sometimes it’s very debilitating.”
This May, the Government of Canada released a “Federal Action on Opioids” plan, part of a push to reduce the unnecessary use of prescription painkillers and combat the growing fentanyl and carfentanil crisis. ICORD researcher Dr. John Kramer has been watching these developments closely, as his latest research may provide inroads for new pain reduction interventions.
Compassion clubs and marijuana dispensaries in B.C., in particularly in Vancouver and Victoria, have been at the forefront of the movement to legalize and regulate cannabis in Canada. With such organizations having operated in Vancouver longer than in any other Canadian city, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) clinician scientist Dr. Amrish Joshi wanted to study the relationship between cannabis dispensaries and the patients seeking out cannabis for their health conditions.
Stroke patients have a lot of challenges, such as trying to relearn lost motor skills, dealing with paralysis, and finding new ways to communicate with speech impairment. But there’s another challenge that often presents long after a stroke, and is poorly understood: pain.
Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute investigators are trying to get a better picture of post-stroke pain and they’re asking patients to help.
Open a medicine cabinet in Canada and you’ll likely find a few containers of old or expired medications. Some of those medications might be leftover opioids – strong painkillers, such as oxycodone, hydromorphone, and morphine, which are often prescribed to treat short-term moderate to severe pain after surgery. Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute scientist Dr. Raymond Tang finds such easy accessibility to opioids troublesome, particularly given the increasing rates of opioid addiction in Canada and the U.S.
Sixty-eight year old former teacher Bronwen Cripps has always been active. But in the summer of 2014, her ability to be active was hampered by her knee noticeably hurting while walking.
“I could just tell something was wrong,” says Cripps, who lives in Coquitlam. “I went to see my doctor about it and thought it was a relapse of the meniscus deteriorating, but she pointed out that that diagnosis was for the other knee!”
During their residencies at St. Paul’s Hospital in Downtown Vancouver, Dr. Erin Cusack and Dr. Rannie Tao were completing long-term electives at Vancouver Coastal Health’s Three Bridges Community Health Centre when they both noticed that many of their patients were suffering from chronic pain conditions and feeling that their needs were not being met by the health care system. What was striking to both of them was the sense of hopelessness among those patients.
