Applications for the 2024-25 Team Building Awards will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Purpose: To provide an opportunity for researchers to apply for up to $3,000 in funding to support the development of a new multidisciplinary research team that will work towards the advancement of knowledge in the field of rural health.
Use of Funds: We are open to considering new and innovative ideas for using the funds in the context of rural research building. Eligible expenses include (but are not limited to):
- Activities involved with recruiting team members;
- Facilitation of group meetings (whether in person or virtual);
- Hosting a symposium or other knowledge translation event;
- Conducting a preliminary literature review;
- Preparing resources to apply for a larger grant;
- Team building exercises or workshops;
- Purchase of knowledge dissemination/translation tools.
* Expenses related to alcohol will not be permitted.
Conditions: The team building funding is allocated for a one-year period (September 2024 – 2025), after which a final report must be submitted to RHSRNbc. A midterm report will also be due in February 2025. Midterm and final report templates will be provided by RHSRNbc. All unused funds must be returned at the end of the one-year period.
For more information and eligibility requirements, please contact the RHSRNbc Coordinator.
2023-24 Team Award Recipients
Something is in the Air: Is There an Association Between Exposure to Unconventional Oil and Gas Development (UOGD) (“fracking”) activity and Exacerbations of Asthma in Northeastern British Columbia?
Dr. Ulrike Meyer & Dr. Margaret McGregor and team (UBC)
Unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD) is an industrial process that extracts underground fossil fuel deposits from shale rock, and presents a number of health concerns including carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in its fluid. The purpose of this application will be to cover costs for a team meeting related to this study, including:
- Bringing together study team members to build relationships and understand each other’s research
- Provide team members with the opportunity to visit and work in Northeast BC
- Discuss progress of study related to the association of exposure to UOG activity and asthma exacerbations in Northeast BC
- Consult with community members, health service providers, and Indigenous community members living in Northeast BC about their experience living near UOG
- Share results of research with community
Building local support for the Emergency Services Registry (ESR) pilot project
Dr. Sarah Henderson (BCCDC)
Climate emergencies can impact individuals differently, and certain factors such as social isolation, economic marginalization, older age, disabilities, multiple comorbid health conditions, severe mental illness, and substance use disorder can put some people at higher risk. These factors are more prevalent in rural and remote communities, where access to healthcare and emergency response services is often limited. The aim of this project is to develop and validate the ESR algorithm(s) to identify people at high risk during climate emergencies so they can be provided with the necessary assistance when emergencies occur. This will be a pilot project in the Merritt community health service area (CHSA), with plans to extend this project provincewide. This will improve and expand health services in rural and remote areas, enhancing resilience to climate emergencies. A team will be built in Merritt to develop and validate the ESR.
A new multidisciplinary team model for a new facility? A community health needs assessment of
Williams Lake, BC
Crystal McLeod and team (UBC)
The rural city of Williams Lake, with a population of approximately 10,753, is situated in the Cariboo region of the Central Interior of BC. However, the city is a hub for healthcare serving over 53,000 residents in the Cariboo-Chilcotin health region and six surrounding First Nations. Williams’ Lake hospital, Cariboo Memorial, is also the highest-level care facility (Level 2) in the area, with tertiary services located over three hours away in Kamloops, BC. This spring, construction was initiated on a new hospital redevelopment program for Williams Lake. Set to be finished in 2029, the project will see the expansion of Cariboo Memorial’s emergency department, inpatient floors, oncology program, and pharmacy. A new interfaith space for cultural practices and traditional healing will be created as well. This study will call upon a wide array of stakeholders and healthcare professionals in the Williams Lake community for input: A community health needs assessment. This will seek to improve access across all facets of health care. At a time where capacity and collaborative decision-making needs to be strengthened in Williams Lake, a health needs assessment will help engage voices from all levels of healthcare and the community. At present, we hope to survey 300 participants and interview 58 healthcare stakeholders, of which 47 will be healthcare providers. The intention will be to interview at least one provider of each discipline and specialty in the community, such as an emergency physician, inpatient physiotherapist, or homecare nurse. The research team who will conduct this study is likewise multidisciplinary, including a nurse, physician, academic health researcher and medical student, to help close any gaps in participation.
Building clinical research capacity in the East Kootenay Region
Stephanie Obara (College of the Rockies) & Dr. Denise Jaworsky (UBC) and team
Clinical research capacity is very limited in many rural communities and as a result, rural communities do not have the expertise and infrastructure needed to ensure that data summarizing their unique rural perspectives are collected. The recent COVID19 pandemic highlighted this deficit for rural communities and new models to support rural research are needed. Co-principal applicant has previously published and presented work highlighting the unique rural considerations and impact of COVID19 in the critical care setting. During COVID19, we saw successes from the United Kingdom clinical trial model which used adaptive clinical trial design embedded within clinical care. Research groups in Canada, such as the Accelerated Clinical Trials group have started to explore this model in Canada, and this proposal seeks to build a team that can make our region a viable rural site for funded clinical research. This team building proposal aims to develop a research collaboration among the University of British Columbia, College of the Rockies, and Interior Health with the goal of building partnerships and local infrastructure to support clinical research in the East Kootenay region.
2021-22 Team Award Recipients
Developing a Community of Practise to improve the health and wellbeing of children in rural, remote, northern and Indigenous communities in BC - Dr. Gislason, SFU and team
The purpose of this project is to invite both existing and new collaborators to come together to explore how best to build relationships and work together to improve the health and wellbeing of children in rural, remote, northern and Indigenous communities in BC. To guide this work, we will investigate how to best cooperate in order to achieve the following four goals: (1)To create a group of researchers, clinicians, allied health professionals, community members and youth interested in advocating for increased support for children in rural communities in BC whose mental health has and/or is being impacted by the climate crisis; (2) To produce grants and manuscripts which will advance knowledge in this field, especially given the mental health urgency of children during the COVID-19 pandemic; (3) To work on developing a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the theoretical, policy, practice, and action dimensions of this problem and a framework for working on these issues; and (4) To increase the interest of trainees in this field of research and to support the development of Early Career Individuals
2020-21 Team Award Recipients
Developing an interprofessional health sector research team to advance the engagement of vulnerable women in prenatal care in northern BC - Dr. Sanders & Dr. Irving, UNBC.
The purpose of this project is to build a new interdisciplinary research team. The goal of this team is to integrate knowledge, methods, and agency from different disciplines, using a synthesis of approaches to examine prenatal care for vulnerable women in northern rural settings. We plan to recruit 10-12 key providers involved in care delivery: health care providers (i.e. nurse practitioners from family services), social worker, Indigenous elder, non-for-profit provider (i.e. harmony house) and convene a series of online webinars/workshop meetings to discuss strategies for clinical involvement and commitment. A key output from this team will be laying the foundations for robust research setting priority work, with a focus on primary care. One avenue we wish to explore is working in collaboration with the James Lind Alliance (JLA) approach thereby extending partnership working to include patient partners. Since the JLA method is designed to raise awareness of gaps that have direct relevance to patient care, we believe a clear priority setting will support future grant applications. While we have experienced a slightly slower start than hoped for due to the changes linked to COVID at the end of 2020 and into 2021 with key staff being redeployed to manage immunizations and contact tracing we can report out on the following activities.
2019-20 Team Award Recipients
Healthy Beginnings: Closing the gap for a brighter Nisga’a future - Martin Guhn & Liza Hadone
With funding from the RHSRNbc Team Award, this past year has been highly productive in terms of team-building between the Toddler Development Instrument (TDI) Research Team at UBC and Lisims Early Learning Partnership (LELP) team in Nisga’a. Over this time, project partners have held over 15 phone call meetings. These meeting times developed a mutual deeper understanding of the context, work and expertise each partner brings to the team. These meetings also were fundamental to co-developing a proposal for UBC’s Community-University Engagement Fund (CUES). We are thrilled to announce we were successful in this application and have been granted funding (January 2020 – August 2021) to continue and build on our partnership. In addition, RHSRNbc Team funding provided our team with the capacity to apply for a Partnership Engage Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSHRC). We are pleased to report we were successful in this competition, providing the partnership additional funding for the next year (April 2020 - March 2021).
Researching the Health Effects of Fracking in Northeast British Columbia – Dr. Meyer, Dr. Caron-Beaudoin and team
The RHSRNbc team building award was used to bring together academic and community-based researchers from a number of disciplines who are currently engaged in research on unconventional gas development (UNGD) and human health. This led to organized site visits, teleconference meetings with doctors and researchers studying this issue in the North. The award was also used to form a stakeholder research advisory group and, to write a grant proposal for a primary study on fracking exposure in Northeastern BC and human health outcomes to be submitted to CIHR in the spring of 2020.
Developing an interprofessional health sector research team to advance physical activity in northern BC – Dr. Pelletier, Dr. Pousette and team.
The purpose of this project is to build a new multidisciplinary research team. The goal of this the team will be to support the promotion of physical activity for the primary and secondary prevention of chronic disease in the context of interprofessional healthcare teams in northern BC. We plan to recruit 10-15 health care providers and convene a meeting to discuss strategies for clinician involvement on our research team, to create a set of research priorities related to physical activity and health care settings in northern BC, and to identify which tools may be helpful for team members to introduce physical activity into their context to improve health services. Healthcare contexts will include perspectives of physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social care workers, nurses and nurse practitioners, family and specialist physicians, and clinical kinesiologists. We aim to include expertise and experience from a broad range of northern stakeholders including practicing clinicians, clinical faculty at UNBC and UBC Faculty of Medicine, representations from the Divisions of Family Practice in the Northern Health Region, the Northern Health Primary Care Network, Northern Health Population and Public Health, First Nations Health Authority, Carrier Sekani Family Services, and the Northern Health Indigenous Health Program. We will also recruit an Indigenous co-lead to assist with the planning of team activities in order to ensure that intentional and specific inclusion of Indigenous knowledge is a key component of future work.
2018-19 Team Award Recipients
Measuring Impact of a Healthcare Travelling Roadshow - Hanlon & Maurice
On 9 November 2018, a Rural Health Services Research Network of BC funded team meeting brought together researchers and key stakeholders to discuss measuring the long-term impact of the Healthcare Travelling Roadshow (HCTRS). The aims of the meeting were (1) to discuss the potential for collaborative research on the long-term impact of the HCTRS, and (2) to formulate a work plan for a grant application to support further study on the impact of the HCTRS. This team meeting concluded that: 1) the Roadshow is an excellent and complex intervention that warrants study; 2) long term study is difficult – surrogate markers of success are necessary; 3) there is a relative paucity of related literature, creating both a challenge and an opportunity; 4) we should move towards developing a Design-Based Research (DBR) Research Proposal in collaboration with colleagues from UBC’s Centre for Health Education Scholarship (CHES) as a means of developing and modifying our theoretical approach to an intervention which is ongoing, and 5) pilot research should gather baseline data to inform and support the subsequent study. Following the meeting, co-investigators were recruited from the Island Medical Program and Interior Medical Program, and an application was submitted to the CHES Distributed Medical Education competition to help fund further baseline data gathering. The application was successful, and we will be conducting a survey of youth in rural settings across the province in 2019/20.
