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Dr Paola Ardiles Gamboa wins 2022 Warren Gill Award for Community Impact

February 23, 2023

Reprinted with permission from the 間眅埶AV Office of Community Engagement

"Paola's approach to building trust and meaningful engagement with the wide range of community partners is also an important part of her community service courses and graduate courses. Through her courses, she teaches us about the importance of showing up authentically, with empathy and creativity, to bridge the gaps between the university and community. Paolas community service course has also led to many innovations in the community."

-間眅埶AV Alumni: Simran Purewal, Hussein Elhagehassan, JV Flores and Hanah Damot

Furthermore, Paola's commitment to bringing health equity to the forefront of Surreys Healthier Communities Partnership has enhanced the impact of our discussions with community stakeholders and policy makers by uplifting populations and members of the community most impacted by social inequities.

-Fraser Health Authority staff

Dr. Paola Ardiles Gamboa is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences who has made a lifelong commitment to deep, impactful and transformational community work. As a social change agent, systems thinker and collaborator, Paola remains deeply committed to a more equal, just and sustainable world through her teaching, research and service contributions.

A champion for community voice, Paola joined 間眅埶AV with extensive leadership and policy experience in the public and non-profit sectors. Early in her career, Paola co-authored Towards Flourishing for All, a policy paper which was an early contribution to support the development of Canadas first national mental health strategy; work that subsequently translated into policy action plans for provinces and territories. In 2012, she received the  for her pioneering policy work in mental health promotion, shifting the way we conceptualize mental health. Paola also played a key leadership role in raising awareness of the gaps in addressing health inequities in BC over a decade ago. Through her role at the health authority, Paola engaged multiple community partners and led an  recommending five different action areas that were then funded and implemented by the provincial health authority, resulting in the development of BCs first health equity indicators.

Paola continues to advance community-engaged teaching, research and policy work in health through her work at 間眅埶AV. In the same month she was named for the Warren Gill Award for Community Impact, Paola and her research partners released a community-engaged research report on the systemic discrimination faced by Internationally Trained Physicians.  arose from a long-standing partnership with  and gives voices to this diverse and marginalized group in ways that are drawing crucial attention to the matter during the current healthcare crisis. To amplify these voices, their team also published , which quickly (in less than two days) had more than 28,000 reads. Locally in Surrey, Paola currently co-leads , an arts-based youth participatory project working to improve road safety policies for newcomer youth, in partnership with her long-standing community partner  and , a cooperative she co-founded to support social innovations to promote health and collective wellbeing.

Paola has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to reflexive scholarship, integrating student feedback and community perspectives to inform her own community-engaged teaching practices and to contribute to improvements at the institutional level. Her scholarship ranges from studies aimed to strengthen democratic practices in teaching and learning to understanding systems level policies impacting student learning in community-engaged education at 間眅埶AV. She has led peer-reviewed studies to assess student experiences and the application of academic-community partnership principles of collaborative educational innovations, such as the  in partnership with RADIUS 間眅埶AV and the , collaborating extensively with Fraser Health Authority, the City of Surrey, 間眅埶AV Surrey community champions, and many local non-for-profit organizations to advance social and environmental sustainability.

As a Latinx practitioner scholar, Paola incorporates equity-centered approaches into all her teaching and curriculum development. In her courses, interdisciplinary student teams work with community partners to produce innovative solutions that prioritize ethical partnerships and community needs as learning outcomes. Many of these innovations have supported dialogue and furthered the development of policies and plans at the community and university level in relation to anti-racism, gender-based violence prevention, food security, active transportation, and welcoming spaces for students living with disabilities. In the last few years, Paola has made space for arts-based approaches in her teaching to support decolonizing curriculum and community-engagement through service courses. Her teaching has been recognized by faculty, staff and students as supporting the creation of an inclusive and safe learning environment that promotes student and community wellbeing. She was recently honoured by the BC Teaching and Learning Council with the inaugural West Coast Teaching Excellence Award, created to recognize post-secondary educators from BC and Yukon.

Paolas achievements and commitment continue to inspire and support the 間眅埶AV community. She has mentored many students and colleagues, and she has consistently been invited to contribute leadership and expertise to support various initiatives at the university related to experiential learning and teaching; sustainability; public dialogue on equity, diversity and inclusion; healthy campus; and 間眅埶AVs first knowledge mobilization summer institute. Since September 2022, she has been serving as Special Projects Advisor to the Vice President, People, Equity and Inclusion, leading a diverse and interdisciplinary team of staff and faculty co-designers working on the development of a Community of Practice for equity practitioners across 間眅埶AV.

Partnership Highlights

The Mayth of Canada report cover

The Myth of Canada: The Exclusion of Internationally Trained Physicians

Evelyn Encalda Grez, Paloa Ardiles Gamboa & Simran Purewal

A community engaged-research report that arose from a long-standing partnership with . It explores the experiences of Internationally Trained Physicians (ITPs)  qualified physicians from non-Western regions (i.e., Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia) seeking to practice medicine in British Columbia  giving voice to this diverse and marginalized group. As the report states: 夷nclusion and equal opportunity is a Canadian myth. ITPs face systemic barriers and exclusion within the medical licensure process despite being ready to provide medical care during a time of chronic physician shortages, a public health crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and mental health and substance use epidemic in the province of British Columbia (Grez et. al, 2023, p. 2). To amplify these voices, their team also published , which quickly (in less than two days) had more than 28,000 reads.

Art on the Go

In partnership with  and the 

 is a partnership between 間眅埶AV, Bridges for Health and the Public Health Association of BC that aims to improve road safety policies for newcomer youth in Surrey. As the project website states: In Surrey, more traffic-related injuries and fatalities occurred in neighbourhoods with higher percentages of newcomers, averaging between 35% and 54% of the total population (Surrey Local Immigration Partnership, 2014). Working in collaboration with newcomers and refugees in Surrey, the project uses principles from equity-centred design and participatory action research to develop community-sourced solutions to this complex issue and to strengthen social connection while doing so.

Health Change Lab website homepage thumbnailHealth Change Lab

 is a once-in-a-degree immersive program that provides students with hands-on learning in tackling challenging social, economic, and environmental issues facing the City of Surrey. Third and fourth-year undergraduate students from across 間眅埶AV come together to form interdisciplinary teams. Together, they investigate a local social problem, build a sustainable business intervention to respond to it, and pitch their ideas to community influencers all in just 13 weeks. In 2019, three students from Health Change Lab came together to form CoColour  a team for the 間眅埶AV Student Community Engagement Competition. With funds they won in the competition, they worked with Surrey community members to .