Managing alcohol in COVID

The following University of Victoria experts are available to media to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Palliative Outreach Resource Team is built upon lessons learned from a three-year study led by UVic palliative care researcher Kelli Stajduhar, lead investigator of the Equity in Palliative Approaches to Care program.

A new palliative care program is providing care to people with life-limiting illnesses who are homeless in Victoria. The Palliative Outreach Resource Team is a UVic, Island Health, Victoria Cool Aid and Victoria Hospice collaboration connecting people in need with health and social supports.

Canada’s National Dementia Strategy, the long-awaited blueprint for finding a cure and for reshaping policy, was released last week.

When the BC government began opening overdose prevention sites (OPS) across the province two years ago, it was an unprecedented response to the overdose crisis. Unlike supervised consumption sites (SCS), which were subject to lengthy (and often onerous) approval processes, OPS were rolled out quickly and led by community members on the front lines of the public-health emergency.

UVic's CanAssist has launched a new website aimed at improving independence and safety among BC seniors. Ability411.ca provides information and personalized answers to seniors' questions about technologies and equipment.

BC's approval of overdose prevention sites two years ago was an unprecedented response to the overdose crisis. They were rolled out quickly and led by community members on the front lines of the public-health emergency. Findings from a CISUR study show the strategy's effectiveness.

UVic alumna Sharon Horton volunteered in Douala, Cameroon for two months onboard the world's largest volunteer-run hospital ship, which provides care to thousands overseas each year. Horton, a nursing graduate, works as an outpatient burn-and-wound nurse in Victoria.

Victoria teens joined seniors with dementia in a choir

"Voices in Motion" is an intergenerational community choir for persons with dementia, their family caregivers and high school students. It's also a UVic research study looking into how participation in an intergenerational choir might foster social engagement and caregiver well-being, improve quality of life for persons with dementia, and reduce some of the stigma surrounding memory loss.

The practice of providing alcohol to people with severe alcohol dependence is a complex and sometimes controversial approach to harm-reduction. For the first time, a peer-reviewed journal has compiled the largest collection of peer-reviewed articles on these managed alcohol programs, led by UVic's Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.

For the first time, a peer-reviewed journal has compiled the largest collection of peer-reviewed articles on managed alcohol programs, which are harm-reduction interventions that provide alcohol to people with severe alcohol dependence. The work is part of a national study led by UVic's Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR).

When Kelli Stajduhar was handed the 2017 Ehor Boyanowsky Academic of the Year Award last month from the Canadian Universities Faculty Association of BC, she was acknowledged as "a living ambassador for the very real difference scientific knowledge brings to revolutionizing health care."

A collaborative style of health research guided by those whose lives are the focus of the research is the model for a new Greater Victoria study aimed at helping people with multiple barriers get the primary health care they need without feeling judged, stigmatized and shut out.

Primary health care delivered with understanding and compassion for people who use drugs is the focus of Greater Victoria's first patient-oriented research study funded through a collaboration between UVic, Island Health, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.