You know summer has come when  the cyclists turn up at UBC. As part of the BC Superweek UBC hosts a GrandPrix race of a 1Km lap. You won’t be surprised to hear that Jack Taunton is behind this promotion of fitness and activity, and that the event includes not only extraordinary athletes from all over the world but also has a children’s event and a corporate event for amateur teams. Profits from the event go directly to  BC Sports Medicine Research Foundation. What an excellent way to raise funds for research.

Tuesday was a terrific event with bright sunshine, happy families enjoying the party atmosphere and at the end of the day some of the most intense athletic performances. A group of over 120 cyclists coming down East Mall at over 40 MPH was extraordinary. The sharp turns and the fact they did 50 laps in just over an hour was remarkable. Thanks Jack for putting on such a great event…

Higgs Boson … maybe not first on your list of things to look for. However UBC has had a major part in the discovery and I met with some of them yesterday in relationship to our own research. They have some of the most extraordinary computational capability and they also are incredibly collaborative. The whole of the project of looking for the particle is an illustration of how collaboration is done to enable discovery. Working with groups across Canada and across the world they shared information and jointly worked on the analysis so that the discovery was made. This sort of scientific collaboration is an illustration to us on how in primary care research we can share and collaborate and groups have started to do this.  One example is the The Canadian Primary Health Care Research Network which can be found on LINKEDIN and here,   Who knows what may happenen if we start to share and work together as well as the physicists.

Enjoy the great weather.

Martin

Starting with the David Snadden. Dave as you may remember was appointed Executive Associate Dean, Education, in the Faculty of Medicine in November last year. In his new position he is providing strategic leadership for all education programs within the Faculty of Medicine. It is good news for family practice to have a family physician in this position. He was a full time family physicians in Beauly in the North of Scotland (picture to the right) for over ten years so he is well qualified to be able to realize the training opportunities good comprehensive primary care can provide at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. The purpose of bringing him to your attention again is that he has just been awarded the  2012 Honorary Medical Alumni Award in recognition of his services to UBC and the community. Congratulations.

Next is a list  of very successful family doctors

BC 2012 Community Family Physician Stephen Beerman (Nanaimo)

BC 2012 Family Physician Teacher Joanna Bates (Vancouver)

BC 2012 Family Physician Researcher Wendy Norman (Vancouver)

Congratulations to all – huge commitments of time and energy as well as plenty of scholarly activity have led to these awards. 

I will focus a little on Wendy Norman. She has just won an extraordinary award. A family doctor since 1987 with a varied and dedicated career including Medecins Sans Frontieres  she joined the clinical scholar program in 2009 supervised by Janusz Kaczorowski in the department of family practice. In 2010 she gained her first grant, a Sue Harris Research award, and she was off and running. She then undertook a Masters of Health Science Epidemiology. Since then she has had another eight grants including a CIHR grant for over $600,000 all while she had a clinical appointment in the department funding her research time herself in the last two years. This rate of grant success, along with her publications, is enviable for a full time academic let alone a person who only has a small fraction of her time paid to do research. In the fall of last year she applied for and gained a grant-tenure position in the department. This meant that she was now eligible to apply for a “research investigator” award and should she be funded would have an academic position in the department. We have two thirds of our 34 academic faculty as grant tenured whose positions are supported by competitive awards.

This spring she applied to Michael Smith and amongst incredibly tough competition has won a MSFHR Career Investigator Award. 22 investigators from over 100 applicants gained these awards. I am really proud of Wendy in gaining this achievement. Her career demonstrates that there are paths for clinicians to do research, though not easy paths. Congratulations. For more details on her work I would encourage you to look at her research site.

Last but not least is Karim Khan. I won’t repeat the article but just point out that The Lancet is not an easy journal in which to win praise for your scholarly endeavours. Yet Karim has done just that. Follow the link to see the justly deserved praise for Karim

Congratualations to all of you. Family practice is in good hands with role models such as you.

Martin