Health xChange is an annual evening of storytelling with PechaKucha. After sold-out events in 2017 and 2018, Health xChange is back, asking: How can we foster health equity through research?

On May 7, 2019, MSFHR and Edge Collective will host the third annual Health xChange. Using a PechaKucha format (20 slides, shown for 20 seconds each), presenters will share their creative approaches for fostering health equity through research, so that all people can reach their full health potential.

Join us, and host Zena Sharman, to learn from and network with BC researchers, policy-makers and knowledge users who are passionate about using research to improve health equity.

Get your ticket today!

Tickets are $10 and include admission and a finger buffet, with all funds directed to our volunteer presenters and their projects/organizations. Complimentary tickets are available for students, patient representatives, and others for whom the ticket price is barrier to attendance.

• Date: May 7, 2019
• Time: 5 – 8 p.m.
• Venue: Federico’s Supper Club, 1728 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC
• Join the conversation: #HealthxChange | @msfhr

Meet the speakers

EQUIP-ED: Shaping social justice in the emergency department 
Aggie Black, Director, Health Services & Clinical Research and Knowledge Translation, Providence Health Care

Indigenous people, racialized newcomers, people with mental illness, those living in unstable housing, facing homelessness, involved in sex work or using substances experience inadequate and unequitable care in Canada’s emergency departments.

Aggie Black is a registered nurse and health care researcher who has spent the last 20 years working to promote equity in health care for underserved populations in the US, Canada and Nicaragua. Here, she presents the work of EQUIP-ED, a deeply collaborative project designed to provide high quality emergency care for all.

Through our own eyes: Exploring HIV stigma, disclosure, and criminalization
Jenn McDermid, Assistant Project Coordinator and Qualitative Researcher, Flo Ranville, Peer Mentor and Qualitative Interviewer, & Lulu Gurney, Peer Research Associate and Qualitative Interviewer, all with the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity

Flo Ranville, a peer mentor and researcher, lived on the Downtown Eastside and experienced substance misuse, violence, homelessness, child apprehension, incarceration, sex work and HIV. From Kincolith, BC (Nisgaa Territory) Lulu Gurney, an interviewer and peer research associate, also has personal experience with substance use and an HIV diagnosis. Jenn McDermid is an SFU grad student with a commitment to combating the stigma of HIV and decriminalizing sex work (she also runs an art collective).

Together they talk about the power of photos and women’s narratives to tell the stories of living with HIV and the urgency of reforming laws that increase shame and isolation.

Working towards equity in the early years 
Alison Gerlach, Assistant Professor, School of Child & Youth Care, University of Victoria

Alison Gerlach is passionate about health and early years approaches that foster child health equity. While practicing as an occupational therapist with Indigenous families and young children, she found many families lacked access to timely and responsive programs.

Here, she talks about her research with Indigenous early years initiatives and the importance of adopting critical, relational approaches. Alison is a 2017 MSFHR Research Trainee.

WelTel: Giving patients a voice from their own time and place
Richard Lester, co-founder and scientific director, WelTel Inc. & International mHealth Society

Richard Lester is UBC clinician-scientist and two-times MSFHR award recipientfocusing on the development of an innovative mobile phone health (mHealth) service to improve healthcare outcomes internationally and within Canada, he also consults on mHealth innovations with the World Health Organization for HIV, TB & tobacco control.

Supporting patients to sustain treatments for life threatening conditions is more than reminding them to take their pills, it is about regular connections. Seeing patients face-to-face isn’t always possible, especially when they live far away from health care centres or are burdened by social and mental health concerns. Technology might be able to come to the rescue! Here, Richard and his team at UBC present WelTel, a digital service that has made an important difference to patients from rural Kenya to Vancouver.

The importance of artivism as knowledge translation: Engaging the public
Megan Marziali, Research Assistant, & Valerie Nicholson, Peer Research Assistant, both with the Epidemiology and Population Health Program, BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

Valerie Nicholson is an Indigenous woman living with HIV, a dedicated community-based researcher, and is strongly involved in her community. Megan Marziali is a research assistant who is passionate about exploring novel avenues of knowledge translation.

Together, Valerie and Megan will discuss the importance of “artivism”, art as a form of activism, as a means of engaging the community of people living with HIV and the general public.

Healing on both sides: A prison/community partnership
Kelsey Timler, Research Manager – Work 2 Give Research, Critical Research in Health & Heathcare Inequities Research Unit, School of Nursing, UBC

Kelsey Timler has a background in public health and approaches all her work from a foundational commitment to equity and social justice. Based out of UBC, she works across a number of community-based and participatory health research projects, all conducted in collaboration with Indigenous communities.

Here, she discusses a prison-Indigenous community partnership program, where incarcerated men build and create items that they subsequently gift to rural and remote Indigenous communities, and the impacts of the program on health and wellness.

Where do we go from here?: Community perspectives on HIV in Surrey
Mia Kibel, Research Assistant, BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, & Patience Magagula, Director, Afro-Canadian Positive Network of BC

Patience Magagula is the Director of the Afro-Canadian Positive Network of BC. HIV positive for 18 years, she is an advocate and activist committed to improving the lives of immigrants and refugees with HIV. Mia Kibel works with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, organizing research and knowledge sharing.

Patience and Mia are part of a team passionate about building communities where people can safely access HIV care. Here, they talk about an initiative in Surrey that brought together HIV activists, healthcare providers, researchers, faculty, and community leaders to share knowledge and create new solutions.

Illicit: Behind the shadows. Engaging the public through collaborative arts-based research
Nicolas Crier, freelance writer and coordinator and facilitator for the Speaker’s Bureau at Megaphone Magazine

Nicolas Crier is an adoptee of Cree heritage and a freelance writer. At 40 years old he has spent approximately half his life surviving in the streets and more than a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It never occurred to Nicolas that being a drug user would ever be useful, but he’s parlayed his street smarts and community connections into a successful career as an overdose responder and outreach worker and, in 2018, became a coordinator and facilitator for the Speakers Bureau at Megaphone Magazine.

Here he will present on Illicit, a community-engaged-arts-based research project with members, harm reduction workers and frontline responders from the former Drug Users Resource Centre. Through art forms such as music, poetry, tableaux, movement and shadow theatre, Illicit explores the nuances of drug culture, the human impacts of drug policy and the realities of the opioid overdose crisis.