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UBC joins international project on indigenous peoples’ health

The UBC Faculty of Medicine is participating in a new international collaboration launched to improve the care of chronic disease among indigenous peoples. 

Betty Calam, associate professor in the Dept. of Family Practice; Leah Walker, clinical instructor in Family Practice; and Kendall Ho, associate professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of the eHealth Strategy Office, will team up with colleagues at universities in Canada, Australia and New Zealand to investigate correlations between indigenous peoples and health issues, such as diabetes.

UBC is joined by three Canadian universities (University of Calgary, Queen’s University, and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine) to form the Canadian contingent participating in the project. The five-year project is called “Educating for equity: Exploring how health professional education can reduce disparities in chronic disease care and improve outcomes for Indigenous populations.” 

The project is supported by the International Collaborative Indigenous Health Research Program, developed and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Health Research Council of New Zealand, and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. CIHR will contribute $1.25 million to support the Canadian contribution to this project.

For more information, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/media/Indigenous_health_collaboration.htm

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Materials engineering graduate student receives ASM Award

Beth Sterling, graduate student in the Dept. of Materials Engineering, will receive a 2010 American Society for Metals (ASM) Marcus A. Grossman Young Author Award. Sterling collaborated with a group for the award-winning paper entitled “Sodium Borohydride Reduction of Aqueous Silver-Iron-Nickel Solutions: a Chemical Route to Synthesis of Low Thermal Expansion-High Conductivity Ag-Invar Alloys,” (published 2009).  Her study focus is on the recrystallization of magnesium alloys.

For more information, visit http://blogs.apsc.ubc.ca/mtrlnews/2010/07/15/asm-award-for-beth-sterling-graduate-student/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ubc-mtrl-news+%28UBC+Materials+Engineering+News%29 

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UBC residents awarded international research grants

UBC medical residents Jacqueline Hudson, Danielle MacNeil, Monica Langer and Zaheer Kanji received the Branch for International Surgery research awards for this year. The four annual $2,500 research grants are awarded to UBC surgery-related residents interested in expanding their understanding of unmet surgical care in low-resource regions.

Three of the researchers will travel to Uganda and continue UBC’s relationship with Mulago Hospital. Hudson (postgraduate year 3, anesthesiology) will focus on safer perioperative care through the wireless pulse oximeter on a cell phone (iPleth).  MacNeil (postgraduate year 4, otolaryngology) will identify barriers to early diagnosis and treatment of oral cancer, and conduct a study using video replay in coaching surgical trainees in Africa. Kanji (postgraduate year 1, general surgery) will create and investigate various strategies and their impact on trauma mortality and quality of life in the less developed world.

The group will build on pre-existing infrastructure of past projects conducted at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

For more information, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/about_us/Awards_and_Honours.htm.

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UBC students visit mining regions of Portugal and Spain

Each year, the fourth-year graduating class of mining engineering fundraise for a field trip to mining regions overseas.  At this year’s trip to Spain and Portugal, the class visited three mines (one underground, two open pit ), one smelter, two universities, and the historical Rio Tinto mining district. 

For the first time, the group met with other mining engineering students at the University of Huelva and the Madrid School of Mines.

For more information, visit http://www.mining.ubc.ca/UndergraduateFieldTrips.html

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