Dr. Rachel Carter (Division of Palliative Care) and Dr. Melanie Murray (Infectious Diseases) are leading 2 of the 30 remarkable partnerships between communities and the university.
UBC Community Engagement, alongside the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation has announced the 2023-24 recipients of the Community-University Engagement Support (CUES) Fund. A total of $707,166 has been allocated to 30 outstanding projects, with awards of up to $25,000 each. These projects exemplify the power of community-university partnerships in addressing priority issues throughout the province.
Paid directly to community partners, CUES funding prioritizes reciprocal, inclusive engagement. This approach ensures all communities—especially those historically, persistently, or systemically marginalized—can benefit.
More about Dr. Carter and Dr. Murray’s projects:
Supporting Grief and Bereavement Programming in the DTES
- Community Partner: Teng Lai Lim, Carnegie Community Centre
- UBC Partner | Faculty: Dr. Rachel Carter, Faculty of Medicine, UBC Vancouver
It is common for people to lack appropriate knowledge of death and bereavement, which has a negative impact in how people die and how they work through their grief after a death of someone significant (human or pet). Death is common in the DTES, especially given the toxic drug supply and COVID-19 pandemic. However, care and assistance surrounding death and bereavement is still very much lacking in this neighbourhood and among community members.
In 2022, Carnegie Community Centre (with the Carnegie Branch Library of the Vancouver Public Library) created and organized the Community Death Care Project. The project provided education and support to the low-income and often stigmatized residents of the DTES (including those who are experiencing homelessness). The project has had great success to date, providing death and dying information sessions, bereavement support, cultural events, and facilitating end-of-life conversations. This grant will allow the continuation of such programming in 2024. Additionally, partnering with UBC, BCCPC and KHRC will allow the development of new programing based on their recent research on the experiences of bereavement and homelessness in the DTES.
Breaking Barriers: Bridging Language Gaps in Research and Knowledge Translation
- Community Partner: Patience Magagula, Afro-Canadian Positive Network of BC (ACP Net)
- UBC Partner | Faculty: Dr. Melanie Murray, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, UBC Vancouver
Researchers with UBC are investigating healthy aging in women with HIV, from cell-to-society, in the community-based British Columbia CARMA-CHIWOS Collaboration (BCC3). Afro-Canadian Positive Network (ACP-Net) is a non-profit organization that has supported newcomer women in British Columbia since 2009, and has worked with the BCC3 study since its creation in 2019. Together, we are working to ensure research involving women with HIV is reflective of the broad array of women with HIV in BC. Herein, we aim to engage women with HIV who speak English as an additional language, through a community meeting to learn how we can improve their access to research initiatives and outputs. We will then translate study materials into 3 additional languages based upon those which are felt by the community to be most impactful to women. We will employ women who speak those languages to trial/validate the translated materials before using them in our study. Knowledge translation materials will also be translated and we will host a unique event whereby these materials will be presented to women participants in these languages as well as English.
To read the full announcement and to learn more about the 2023-2024 Community-University Engagement Support Fund recipients, please visit: https://communityengagement.ubc.ca/news/2023-24-community-university-engagement-support-fund-recipients/