Join us in congratulating Dr. Kaitlyn Goldsmith and her team on their C2 award!
Michael Smith Health Research BC (MSHRBC) has announced the recipients of the 2023 Convening & Collaborating (C2) competition. This program creates pathways from research evidence to impact and help ensure that cutting-edge health research can directly improve the health of British Columbians and BC’s health system.
C2 awards support health researchers and research users to engage in meaningful collaboration to co-create relevant and impactful research for people such as patients, health practitioners, and policymakers. Eleven teams led by UBC researchers received funding through the Convening & Collaborating (C2) Program. These collaborative teams consist of researchers, health professionals, trainees, and research users—and are investigating research areas that address BC health system priorities.
One of these teams was co-led by Dr. Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai, from the School of Nursing, and Dr. Kaitlyn Goldsmith, a lecturer in the Department of Psychology. Their research is titled: “Defining research priorities for trauma-informed design of digital health interventions in sexual health.”
The call for trauma-informed design is important, especially among people with sensitive and potentially stigmatizing sexual health challenges. Digital health interventions and technologies, while convenient and cost-effective, also carry the risk of inadvertently triggering emotional trauma among end-user patients. Therefore, trauma-informed design can help the threats of technology-mediated trauma.
Yet, this important field lacks clear research direction on the best and most meaningful ways to conduct research that satisfies the collective interest of all the stakeholders who are typically involved in the design and deployment of digital health interventions. Drs. Abdulai and Goldsmith’s research proposes interdisciplinary stakeholder engagement, helping bring together experts in digital health, trauma-informed care, and patient partners in sexual health to explore research priorities on the trauma-informed design of digital technologies.
