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Three researchers from the Faculty of Human and Social Development (HSD) have been named Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholars (MSHR BC).  

The program provides $90,000 per year for five years for salary support to allow the researchers to commit more time to research and to fund graduate students.

Two of the scholars are assistant professors in the School of Nursing, Jae-Yung Kwon and Mariko Sakamoto, while the third scholar is Sarah Wright Cardinal, an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy.

Previous recipients in HSD include Nursing's Nancy Clark and PHSP's Renée Monchalin.

Jae-Yung Kwon 

Jae-Yung Kwon’s MSHR BC Scholar award will support his focus on “Tailoring health services by contextualizing the person behind patient-reported data” for the next five years. 

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) play an increasing role in improving health outcomes. They provide information about patients’ perspectives of their care, including their physical, mental and social health. However, assistant nursing professor Jae-Yung Kwon explains, the data collected are merely numbers that do not provide a holistic assessment of a patient’s health. 

So, Kwon is pioneering a new approach for contextualizing patient-reported data with patient stories. This will have the potential to ease patient-clinician dialogue and identify specific education and intervention strategies. The aim, he says, is to tailor health services to address the unique and evolving health needs of individuals. 

“For PROs to achieve their full potential,” Kwon says, “we need context, details and insights into why a patient’s health is improving, deteriorating or remaining stable over time. The overall goal of my research program is to promote person-centred care. I want to understand the socio-demographic characteristics and circumstances of patients who experience differences in—or different perceptions of—health outcomes.” 

Mariko Sakamoto 

Mariko Sakamoto’s MSHR BC Scholar award will support “Co-Creating Age and Dementia-Friendly Communities: A Community-Engaged Program of Research.” 

“It's a fantastic award and opportunity for someone like me who is still early career. I can really focus on developing my research program,” Sakamoto says. 

Communities, organizations and policy makers recognize the need to make the community setting a place where people can “age in place” and experience quality of life even as they live with conditions such as dementia. Sakamoto’s community-engaged research program addresses this need by engaging directly with people with lived experience. Her goal is to build a Community Action Group (CAG) of people with dementia, and to conduct co-research with them to inform the development of age- and dementia-friendly communities. 

Sakamoto also works closely with the Alzheimer Society of BC, which partnered with MSHR BC on this funding. 

Sarah Wright Cardinal 

“Prior to the Indian Act and the Potlatch Ban,” Sarah Wright Cardinal says, “Indigenous Nations in Canada had complex and complete healthcare systems with intrinsic ties to the land and spirit-based understandings of the cosmos. Within these holistic systems, the individual, family, and community were cared for.” 

Wright Cardinal, an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy, will use her five-year MSHR BC Scholar award, “Sharing medicine bundles and pathways to community wellness: articulating nation-specific ceremonial, land-based wellness practices,” to enliven the concept of land as healer, reclaim ceremonial healthcare practices, and identify—and share—Nation-specific pathways to community wellness in contemporary contexts. 

Through a series of interrelated research projects with several Nations, Wright Cardinal’s goal is to articulate how intergenerational knowledge transmission can be enhanced to advance community wellness and the revitalization of traditional health systems. 

Ultimately, she intends that recommendations drawn from the research outcomes will inform the development of Nation-specific community wellness frameworks and present ways for Canadian healthcare systems to engage the role of traditional healing. 

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