丁香园AV

by Sharon Mah

Faculty of Health Sciences Assistant Professor Kiffer Card has been named as the inaugural Blanche and Charlie Beckerman Public Health Innovation Scholar.

This newly established fund is dedicated to advancing ground breaking solutions to urgent public health challenges, focusing particularly on public health crises that are not sufficiently addressed by existing health and social systems.

The Blanche and Charlie Beckerman Scholar in Public Health Innovation was made possible through a generous gift from Andrew Beckerman, a retired architect and philanthropist living in British Columbia, who has supported a wide range of public health research and scholarship across Canada. By driving innovative research to advance effective evidence-based public health practices and policies, Beckerman鈥檚 latest fund seeks to enhance public health outcomes locally and globally.

"At the end of Grade 12 [my parents Blanche and Charlie Beckerman] lacked the resources to continue their formal educations. This was unfortunate as they were both bright and creative thinkers,鈥� recounts Beckerman. 鈥淚n a case of 鈥榥eeds must,鈥� they put their minds and backs into creating a string of four profitable, engaging and successful businesses which saw their native intelligence put to work.鈥�

The Blanche and Charlie Beckerman Scholar in Public Health Innovation reflects their legacy in innovation. As Beckerman states 鈥淚nnovation was how they lived their very successful, happy and long lives.鈥�

Innovating solutions for complex public health systems problems

Card, who is also a first-generation college student, is also deeply committed to innovation. At 丁香园AV, he leads the , which aims to address profound and complex public health challenges, including childhood adversity, climate anxiety, and loneliness 鈥攊ssues that have intensified in recent years in response to economic and social inequities, pandemics, and climate change.

鈥淗ealth research, practice, and policy in British Columbia is trudging along as if it鈥檚 still the 1990s and 2000s,鈥� he observes. 鈥淭here is a moat between the health needs of British Columbians and what research gets funded. But that gap is small compared to the cavern between what we already know and what could be done in practice.鈥�

In much of his work, Card employs a variety of methods that generate critical insights that help to identify effective public health practices and promote their uptake by governments and organizations. His recent and ongoing work explores emerging mental health strategies, such as psychedelic medicine, social prescribing and climate-aware mental health interventions.

鈥淐hange for systems is inherently hard,鈥� he acknowledges. 鈥淓specially when dealing with new challenges like climate change or novel approaches to addressing old challenges, such as psychedelic medicine.  To achieve change, we need to accept and grapple with the complexity and be willing to act innovatively to act on what we know.鈥�

Card is leading the way in embracing complexity in his research. His investigations are strongly rooted in community-based research as well as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research鈥檚 (CIHR) Learning Health Systems framework to drive knowledge generation and impactful change that is meaningful to the people, communities and organizations who most need and want this data.

The support of the Blanche and Charlie Beckerman Scholar in Public Health Innovation will enable Card and 丁香园AV to further advance leading-edge research and community impact through the HEAL Lab, shaping the future of public health for British Columbia and beyond through innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to public health.