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The Medicine Bundle Pilot: An Indigenous Two-Spirit Approach to HIV and STBBI Health in British Columbia
Get PDFThe social determinants of health and the determinants of Indigenous health, including the historical and ongoing effects of settler-colonialism across Turtle Island, contribute to increased rates of HIV and sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) facing Indigenous people in Canada. Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous folks face further systemic barriers to accessing sexual health resources. The Medicine Bundle Pilot project takes a strengths-based approach to addressing health inequities in HIV and STBBI awareness and prevention. The Medicine Bundle Pilot was developed by the Community-Based Research Centre’s Two-Spirit Program to address barriers and increase culturally safe access to sexual health resources for Indigenous people in British Columbia. The Medicine Bundle is an Indigenous-developed approach to the HIV self-test kit and dried-blood spot test, combining traditional Indigenous medicines with Western sexual health resources. Medicine Bundles were distributed to Indigenous communities and community members across British Columbia, fostering safer pathways to care. My thesis aimed to (1) understand participants’ experience with the Medicine Bundle Pilot, and (2) determine barriers and access limitations to sexual health resources for Indigenous people in British Columbia. Existing barriers include limited access to sexual health resources within communities and being wrongfully denied access to services. Results demonstrate that the Medicine Bundle is a very effective sexual health resource for Indigenous people, and participants reported improved experiences with testing through the Medicine Bundle.Graduate2025-01-1
"Am I Japanese? Am I Nikkei?" An exploration of Yonsei and Gosei Japanese Canadian Identities
Get PDFDuring the Second World War, thousands of Japanese Canadians, also referred to as Nikkei (i.e Japanese diaspora), were forcibly uprooted, dispossessed of their homes and belongings, and unjustly interned. As the shadow of internment continues to linger over Japanese Canadian families across the country, how has this history impacted the identities of the younger generations within the community? Through amplifying the voices of young Japanese Canadians, this project creates a deeper understanding of the identities and experiences of Yonsei and Gosei (i.e. fourth and fifth generation Nikkei), unpacking what it means to be Japanese Canadian or Nikkei. In applying a grounded, anthropological and qualitative approach, this project seeks to explore the complexities of Japanese Canadian/Nikkei identity through holding Japanese Canadian food gatherings as spaces of cultural healing and community building. This project also applies an auto-ethnographic approach, in which the personal experience of the researcher is used to navigate the identities and experiences of the participants. This project found that there is no solitary answer to the question, “What does it mean to be Japanese Canadian and Nikkei?” However, through conducting food gatherings, this project forges spaces of belonging, using food to connect participants to their pasts and one another.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Solvi: A visual constraint modeling tool
No full textThe authors would like to thank Daniel Zenkovitch for his input into the Solvi application development.Discrete constraint problems surface often in everyday life. Teachers might group students with complex considerations and hospital administrators need to produce staff rosters. Constraint programming (CP) provides techniques to efficiently find solutions. However, there remains a key challenge: these techniques are still largely inaccessible because expressing constraint problems requires sophisticated programming and logic skills. In this work we contribute a language and tool that leverage knowledge of how non-experts conceptualize problems to facilitate the expression of constraint models. Additionally, we report the results of a study surveying the advantages and remaining challenges towards making CP accessible to the wider public.Current Funding Sources List:
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canada Award Number: 2020-04401 — Recipient: Miguel A Nacenta
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom Award Number: DTG1796157 — Recipient: Xu ZhuFacultyReviewe
Palladium catalyzed C–O bond activation
Get PDFCarboxylate C–O bonds are atom-economical, robust in synthesis, and easily accessible, but have traditionally been ineffective synthetic handles for Pd catalysis. In this thesis the utility of these cross-coupling handles in Pd catalysis has been established. As global climate issues necessitate an alternative to oil-based processes, the development of Pd-catalyzed C–O bond activation chemistry, such as the chemistry explored in this thesis, has the potential to aid in biomass becoming a common future feedstock.
This thesis is divided into three research chapters. Firstly, we evaluated the mechanism of an air-stable, base-free, Pd-catalyzed cross coupling of enol carboxylates and aryl boronic acids that was first developed within the Leitch Lab. This experimental evaluation uncovered key intermediates that allowed us to propose a cationic Pd(II)-only mechanism. Secondly, the knowledge gained in evaluating the mechanism was applied to Miyaura borylation of various enol carboxylates. In this study we uncovered that the nature of the enol carboxylate and the boron source greatly impacted the reactivity in the initial synthesis as well as any future desired reactivity of the enol boronate. Finally, by identifying active pharmaceutical ingredients, specifically pyrido[1,2-a]pyrimidin-4-ones, that could be used in future C–O activation chemistry, we systematically approached their synthesis to create and characterize a library of substituted molecules. We demonstrated that we could functionalize these molecules with both pivalate and tosylate synthetic handles. Because the fundamental reactivity of these carboxylate C–O bonds is established, these three chapters have created myriad potential research projects that are discussed in Chapter 5.Graduate2025-12-1
Café Scientifique: Sharing Best Strategies for Inclusion of Mental Health Patients and Families in Research
Get PDFThe World Health Organization (WHO) reports a global increase in mental illness, affecting 1 in 8 people, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. To address systemic inequities in mental health service access, interdisciplinary collaborations with People With Lived and Living Experiences (PWLLE) are essential. Strategies like Strategies for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) are crucial for inclusive mental health support. A Café Scientifique event was conducted, hosted by the Health Services and Systems Research Cluster at the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health (IALH), University of Victoria (UVic), funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), featured panel speakers from Vancouver Island who shared experiences and perspectives with SPOR. This event aimed to foster dialogue, provide insights, and identify areas for enhancing mental health systems and services. Research attains depth and relevance by prioritizing the perspectives of both patients and their families, and recognizing the expertise of PWLLE. This approach contributes to advancing more effective and equitable mental health services, fostering a patient-centred approach that tailors interventions to individual needs, thereby promoting impactful and compassionate mental health care.Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards (JCURA)UndergraduateReviewe
The right of return and citizenship applied to Canadian "ISIS brides"
Get PDFDeveloped a foundation by defining Canadian citizenship concepts, such as jus sangius, jus soli, and birthright lottery. Used online databases to research the Right of Return, an international human right that allows individuals to leave and return to their country of citizenship. Applied this and research on Canadian citizenship to a case study on ‘ISIS Brides’. ‘ISIS Brides’ are Canadian women who have been denied the right to return to Canada due to their involvement with ISIS, usually through marriage, and many are now requesting repatriation. After extensive research, discussions, and analysis, the project asserts that ‘ISIS brides’ must be subject to repatriation and rehabilitation on Canadian soil under the Right of Return.Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Awards (VKURA)UndergraduateReviewe
Cost-effectiveness of a police education program on HIV and overdose among people who inject drugs in Tijuana, Mexico
Get PDFBackground: Incarceration is associated with drug-related harms among people who inject drugs (PWID). We trained >1800 police officers in Tijuana, Mexico on occupational safety and HIV/HCV, harm reduction, and decriminalization reforms (Proyecto Escudo). We evaluated its effect on incarceration, population impact and cost-effectiveness on HIV and fatal overdose among PWID.
Methods: We assessed self-reported recent incarceration in a longitudinal cohort of PWID before and after Escudo. Segmented regression was used to compare linear trends in log risk of incarceration among PWID pre-Escudo (2012-2015) and post-Escudo (2016-2018). We estimated population impact using a dynamic model of HIV transmission and fatal overdose among PWID, with incarceration associated with syringe sharing and fatal overdose. The model was calibrated to HIV and incarceration patterns in Tijuana. We compared a scenario with Escudo (observed incarceration declines for 2 years post-Escudo among PWID from the segmented regression) compared to a counterfactual of no Escudo (continuation of stable pre-Escudo trends), assessing cost-effectiveness from a societal perspective. Using a 2-year intervention effect and 50-year time horizon, we determined the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER, in 2022 USD per disability-adjusted life years [DALYs] averted).
Findings: Compared to stable incarceration pre-Escudo, for every three-month interval in the post-Escudo period, recent incarceration among PWID declined by 21% (adjusted relative risk = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.68-0.91). Based on these declines, we estimated 1.7% [95% interval: 0.7%-3.5%] of new HIV cases and 12.2% [4.5%-26.6%] of fatal overdoses among PWID were averted in the 2 years post-Escudo, compared to a counterfactual without Escudo. Escudo was cost-effective (ICER USD 3746/DALY averted compared to a willingness-to-pay threshold of 13,557).
Interpretation: Escudo is a cost-effective structural intervention that aligned policing practices and human-rights-based public health practices, which could serve as a model for other settings where policing constitutes structural HIV and overdose risk among PWID.JAC received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01DA043421); AB was funded for this work by National Institute on Drug Abuse (DP2DA049295, US–Mexico drug abuse prevention research fellowship, (R01DA037773, and R37A015612) and by the UC MEXUS CONACyT postdoctoral fellowship; SS and LB were supported by NIDA grant R01DA039073 and NM was funded by NIDA grants R01DA03773 and R01DA049644, NIAID/NIDA (R01AI147490), and the San Diego Center for AIDS Research (SD CFAR), an NIH-funded program (P30AI036214), which is supported by the following institutes and centers: NIAID, NCI, NHLBI, NIA, NICHD, NIDA, NIDCR, NIDDK, NIGMS, NIMN, NIMHD, FIC, and OAR.FacultyReviewe
In-vitro In-silico Modeling of Glioblastoma Tumor Growth and Invasion
Get PDFIn this thesis, we investigate various aspects of tumor progression through formation, growth, and invasion, by a multidisciplinary approach involving mathematical modeling and experimental validation. We begin this study by modeling the transient formation of tumors by a system of reaction-diffusion partial differential equations (PDEs) that considers adhesion forces, cell proliferation, and pressure-induced growth. The process of tumor formation includes a preliminary contraction phase where adhesion forces densify cell aggregation. This phase proceeds until the cell concentration reaches a threshold, the so-called “relaxed concentration” at equilibrium. Afterwards, cell proliferation raises concentration and produces pressure which breaks the equilibrium. Providing analytical and numerical solutions, the model’s reliability is confirmed through experiments with tumor-cultured human glioblastoma (hGB) cancer cell lines. We expand the model to analyze the instability of radially symmetric growth in response to asymmetric perturbations. By improving the model to incorporate additional variables such as nutrient concentration, consumption rates, and surface tension, we focus on the asymmetric modes of growth, which grow in time and change the spherical configuration of the tumor. We show that a high nutrient source concentration allows for a large tumor size, which increases the number of unstable excited asymmetric modes. However, high rates of nutrient consumption and surface tension can lead to a smaller size of the tumor and a smaller number of growing asymmetric modes. This analysis, indicating the natural instability of the spherical configuration of tumor was confirmed by a comparison between the shapes of in-vitro hGB tumors and the configuration of the first few asymmetric modes predicted by the model.
To further understand the effect of tumor microenvironment (TME) on tumor configuration, we study biomechanical stimulus-induced remodeling of tumors in response to gradients of external biochemical stimuli, considering the tumor as an evolving material. We develop an evolution law for the remodeling-associated deformation which correlates the remodeling to a characteristic tensor of external biochemical stimuli. The asymmetric remodeling and the induced mechanical stresses are analyzed for different types of biochemical distributions. Using a tumor-on-a-chip platform, the degree of remodeling is estimated for the ellipsoidal tumors over time. Additionally, we explore invasion as one of the key hallmarks of tumors by introducing a continuum model that integrates various factors to predict a distinctive shell-type invasion pattern in which cells at the outer layer of the tumor collectively move away from the core and form a shell-type shape. We adopt a non-convex free energy that allows for phase separation to model the motion of the invasive shell.
To develop a more realistic model, we extend our mathematical framework to include heterogeneities within a tumor as they play a crucial role in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. We present a hybrid discrete-continuum (HDC) model incorporating experimental measurements and in-vitro tumor-on-a-chip platforms to study tumor growth, invasion, and their dependency on matrix stiffness. The model integrates the continuum field of variables with a discrete approach and incorporates the random walk method for individual cell migration. Moreover, we study the influence of matrix stiffness on tumor growth and invasion using a PEGDA-printed tumor-on-a-chip platform. The presented framework is capable of distinguishing the growth and invasion of non-resistant versus chemo-resistant tumors, as well as the inhibitory effect of a chemotherapeutic drug. We also show that U251 non-resistant tumors grow faster compared to the temozolomide (TMZ)-resistant tumors, whereas the TMZ-resistant tumors have the longest invasion length. We utilize a stochastic approach that is consistent with observed biological behavior and provides a more realistic representation of the invasion process. This hybrid model, validated against an in-vitro co-culturing of non-resistant and TMZ-resistant hGB tumors with healthy neurons all embedded within a hydrogel matrix, shows promise in quantitative predictions on volumetric growth, invasion length, and invasion patterns of tumors.
Our study concludes by highlighting the comprehensive understanding achieved through analytical modeling, experimental validation, and hybrid modeling techniques. The findings lay the groundwork for future investigations into therapeutic interventions, considering the intricate interplay between biological and mechanical factors in the TME.Graduate2025-03-1
Patterns of dietary supplement use among GBT2Q men and non-binary individuals in Canada
Get PDFThere is a lack of research regarding dietary supplement (DS) use among Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Two-Spirit, Queer (GBT2Q) men and non-binary individuals, despite the higher prevalence of body image issues and societal pressure within this community. This study aimed to investigate patterns and predictors of DS use in this population, including types of DS used, sources of information, and reasons for DS use. A validated and anonymous online questionnaire was completed by 204 participants (52.5% men, 43.1% gay, mean age 29.34 + 6.77 years) across Canada, who were consuming DS at the time of the study. Analyses included descriptive statistics to characterize the sample based on gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, and other demographic attributes, using Pearson's chi-square tests and multi-way cross-tabulation analyses. Additionally, regression analyses, including binary and logistic regressions, were employed to identify predictors of DS use. Data analysis concluded that vitamins/minerals (92.2%), proteins (84.3%) and carbohydrates (75.5%) were the most consumed types of supplements. Identifying as certain genders and sexualities was significantly associated with supplement preferences, such that men reported higher use of amino acids (p = 0.033) and non-vitamins/mineral antioxidants compared to individuals identifying as other genders (p = 0.006). Moreover, bisexual participants consumed amino acids (p = 0.043) and carbohydrates (p = 0.026) more frequently when compared to non-bisexual participants. The most listed reason for DS use was to improve immunity (60.3%), with health care professionals being listed as the source of information by most participants (51.0%). Findings from this study can serve as a foundation for further research in this area and can guide the formulation and implementation of adequate policies targeting this underserved population.This research project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and its Individual Partnership Engage Grants #892-2021-2007.FacultyReviewe
Public administration education in Canada: How we are responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action in our postsecondary institutions
No full textThis thesis explores the ways in which postsecondary public administration programs across Canada have responded to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action in their curriculum, pedagogy, and strategic activities. Approaching the ten-year anniversary of the TRC’s Final Report, this study sought to understand what progress has been made by the public institutions largely responsible for educating public servants. This study explored program responses through (1) a review of websites and program curriculum; (2) interviews with Program Heads on their program’s engagement; and (3) interviews with faculty from one program on their engagement. Research findings suggest a hesitancy across the discipline to engage with truth, reconciliation, decolonizing, and Indigenizing, including in discussion about how this work should be done. However, it also indicates that there are programs championing this work. Importantly, this study highlights the need for communication within the discipline to further commitments to truth and reconciliation.Graduate2025-08-1