Dr. Mark Gilbert and his team have been awarded funds to explore anxiety among clients of SmartSexResource.com’s sexual health chat services for the next year.

Dr. Troy Grennan and team have been granted funding to pilot a novel assay to reduce diagnostic lead time for syphilis in asymptomatic men who have sex with men.

Dr. Tom Kosatsky and the environmental health team have been awarded funding to study the potential toxicity of road dust in the spring in rural BC.

We look forward to seeing the results of these research studies and where they may lead in the future. For BCCDC faculty interested in applying for the next competition, be sure to watch your email inboxes in February for the announcement of the Spring 2019 competition, with a deadline of April 1st.

To see some of our past research successes, click through to our main research page, on the BCCDC Foundation website, or you can review all posts in this blog for other successful OAP applications by clicking on the Open Awards Program category.

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It has been globally recognized that gbMSM have a disproportionate burden of syphilis cases but few interventions have yet been found to be effective at stemming the epidemic. The group of researchers at the BC Centre for Disease Control want to understand the underlying trends and systemic determinants of health to be able to develop comprehensive and holistic programs and ultimately, improve the health of gbMSM. They are using a participatory action research model to explore factors contributing to local barriers to health care access, among other social determinants of health.

The preliminary qualitative data was presented at the Gay Men’s Health Summit in November 2017 in Vancouver, with a draft manuscript currently in progress now that the qualitative interviews are complete. Next steps for the coming year include development and completion of a quantitative questionnaire, and development of a database of overarching themes emerging from the interviews.

According to Drs Grennan and Grace,

The results from our qualitative interviews demonstrate some tensions between what individuals know about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the risk of acquiring these infections, and how their sexual behaviour plays out. We look forward to delving deeper into these issues with our forthcoming quantitative questionnaire.

The long term goal is to turn research outcomes, from both phases of the study, into actions. It is planned that this will be in the form of development of tools to help medical practitioners guide who would benefit from intervention and in what circumstances it would be appropriate. As well as pinpointing systemic areas that need to be addressed in order to optimize service delivery and access to care for gbMSM individuals, to help inform advocacy to shift public perception and evidence for policy change. The work for this project is taking place over three years.

As Canada’s largest community foundation, Vancouver Foundation is dedicated to creating healthy, vibrant and livable communities across BC.

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The research was conducted over a two year period, and it involved the collection of multiple species of ticks from small rodents in areas of British Columbia that were determined to be high risk for tick exposure. The results of the study were consistent with previous studies and data suggest that there is a low prevalence of ticks carrying the predominant causative agent for Lyme disease. The full article can be read online here .

This study is one of the projects that the BCCDC Foundation has helped provide funding for, through grants and awards. The Foundation is proud to play a role as BCCDC researchers continue to work towards improving public health in British Columbia. A big congratulations to all involved in the study. We are looking forward to seeing what comes out of Dr Morshed and his team’s other projects; they have been working on spirochetes including Lyme disease pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi since 1997 at BCCDC. Dr Morshed has isolated many strains of B burgdorferi over the years from different parts of the province. Currently Dr Morshed and his team are trying to characterise those isolates through whole genome sequencing and are also working on developing molecular tools for detecting other spirochaetal pathogen such as Treponema pallidum (syphilis) and Helicobacter pylori (gastric pathogen).

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