Research Projects
The research and scholarly activities undertaken in the Research Division fall under two priority research areas: 1) The School of Medicine as an Intervention, and 2) Health Systems. Here are some highlighted projects.
Health Systems
An AI-driven approach to identify primary care clinics in British Columbia
What is the question: Where are primary care clinics located in British Columbia, and which communities may not have enough care?
What we are doing: We are creating a way to find primary care clinics using public information about doctors. We will use mapping tools and AI to help find and check clinic locations. We will compare the number of people living in each community. This will help us find places that may have fewer primary care services. We will also create an online map so people can see where more primary care services are needed across the province.
What we expect to find: We expect to create a reliable list and map of primary care clinics in British Columbia. We also hope to find communities that may have fewer primary care services than they need. We will create a method that can be used each year again as the information about doctors changes.
Why are the results important: Right now, it is hard to know exactly where primary care clinics are located across British Columbia. Without this information, it is harder to see which communities may need more services. This project could help health planners, researchers, policymakers, and communities better understand where primary care services are located and where more support may be needed.
Knowledge Translation Lessons from B.C.’s Short-Lived Drug Decriminalization Pilot
What was the question: Why does research rarely become public policy?
What we did: Knowledge translation, the communication of research evidence into actionable policy or practice change, is influenced by many unpredictable factors.
Using B.C.’s drug decriminalization pilot as a case study, we wanted to understand what some of these factors were that led to the program’s ending. The pilot decriminalized the possession of 2.5 grams or less of an opioid, cocaine, methamphetamine, or MDMA for personal use in certain settings from January 2023 to January 2026.
We analyzed 45 journal articles, news stories, and statements from advocacy groups, and explored how social and political context interacted with research-to-policy knowledge translation in BC’s drug decriminalization pilot. We used established analytical frameworks in our analysis to help understand our findings, and we created a detailed timeline to visualize key milestones in the pilot’s history.
What we found:
Based on the common recurring themes that we identified, our work supports the following recommendations.
- Knowledge translation should be ongoing rather than a final, one-time activity after research is published.
- Knowledge translation involves ongoing communication with partners about the policy’s purpose, reasonable outcomes, evaluation measures, communication responsibilities, and processes for responding to new evidence.
- During implementation, timely data monitoring and plain language communication can help distinguish real policy effects from other social and health system changes happening at the same time.
- Well-defined and ongoing decision-making roles for affected community members can strengthen the relevance, legitimacy, and equity of policy decisions.
Why are the results important: Our work will help researchers, policymakers, advocates, and community members understand and succeed in research-to-policy knowledge translation in their context.