Terry Lavender/RATasks
ADDITIONAL MISSION
Context: Norbert (Assoc. VP Research) asked me to form an Institute. An Institute is like a Centre, but is overseen by SFU Research, while a Centre is overseen by a Dean.
There are huge amts. of politics involved, so please keep this under your hat. If, however, you find that it would be very helpful to contact anyone you know in campus PR, maybe you could phrase it as people we'd like to invite to the Open House? (We would anyway.)
(a) Identify any potential members of an Institute re: Pain at SFU.
NOTE: Health Sciences just unveiled a Chronic Diseases Centre (or Institute).
(b) We first have to find that document,
which hopefully is somewhere on SFU's site.
c) Then, we need to look at any faculty member at SFU
from any department whose work may be applicable outside of Health Sciences.
d) Then within Health Sciences.
(Sounds crazy, but requires a FTF description.)
This could be someone obvious, like Ellen Balka, does not do anything related to pain per se, but whose research would definitely be related (Health Comm., usability).
Perhaps there are faculty who deal with biofeedback (Psychology, Bio) and Chronic Pain Sequelae (depression, insomnia, anxiety, social isolation, drug dependency, kinesiophobia] (Kinesiology). Maybe CS, Anthropology (of Medicine)/Ethnography, Criminology (their addiction experts may not be focused on dependency vs. addiction, but you never know), Philosophy, and so on.
This will take creative & strategic thinking, so don't be afraid to suggest suggest people whom you think would be a longshot, like a VR guy from Geology. Pay particular attention to newly hired faculty (2005 onwards), CRCs, Chairs and so on -- they have less to lose and fewer politics, possibly.
There's a book of essays from Harvard Press on Pain Studies -- (Pain and Its Transformations) it may be helpful to look at the contents page to see the potential reach, as they include experts who range from sociology to music, dance, ethnography, philosophy and so on. Perhaps an ENglish Prof. who write about the body, things like that.
The goal is to find 5 people who will say yes, so that usually takes 10-15 people for me to contact and meet with.
Priority level #1 At the moment, this is the burning issue, esp finding the Health Sciences' Chronic Diseases Centre (Institute?) document. (Because ours can't be a big overlap.
I think they are more focused on policy & community issues tho.)
It would be great to have it for next Wed., both in email and printed out.
Please also remind me to update you re: additional RA hours after Chris and I return from the NCE GRAND meeting Feb.13th. It is going to be very busy from then until Feb.24th, which is when the ISEA proposal is due.
SPRING 2012: Main idea: maintain social media help w/budget stuff help w/maintaining contact help strategize w/issues below (that we can produce in the summer)
DGr call Desiree re: paying Terry past amt. DGr call SFU Finance re: iPad purchases DGr review budget w/Shaw (10-20 hrs./week spring, 20+ summer)
Terry's estimates 5 hours a week: maintain social media in current form + 5 hours a week: move blogsite, create strategy for moving info to portable devices, create fiducals Pain Toolbox
NOTE: Chris takes care of most NCE GRAND budgetary things.
MISSIONS
• Maintain social media work
• budgetary help: DGr will locate 5 submissions
help Dgr w/excel spreadsheet review NCE GRAND budget, non-salary items (travel, equipment, materials*) Terry can be back-up for reimbursements when DGr is out of town or unavailable
• Pain Toolbox
Please familiarize yourself with it Please check to see if Pain BC has it on their website
This is a tricky thing for 2 reasons: 1. patients are overwhelmed with info, 2. and their condition usually changes, with an emphasis from one problem to another.
The approach of most pain docs is to address the most current & difficult sequela -- insomnia, depression, etc. The treatment approach is also two-fold: what the physician can do (rx, procedures) PLUS referrals to other health care professionals.
Currently, the Pain Toolbox is great as a resource (think yellow pages of service providers who have been sanctioned as good ones) BUT it is badly designed (need 2 good undergrads to make it legibile), and it COULD be better used as an info/educational and pain management tool. What's missing for its use as a tool is a huge gap about how patients can USE the toolbox other than as yellow pages. As one baby step toward that, I wrote small paragraphs as headers for each "tool," so that even if patients don't need to use that tool at the moment, they have a modicum of info about it.
knowledge translation as an intermediary step toward greater use of technologies I have 4 CIHR grant proposals in progress:
On one (UofT) -- the only one that has been decided upon (we got it!) -- I'm a "knowledge user."
Medical researchers are very progressive I think because they tend to include "knowledge users" (patients, experts who aren't doctors) on their grant proposals.
On the other CIHR grant proposals, I'm a PI described as an expert in "knowledge translation."
Medical researchers seem to have no familiarity with the idea of design, let alone more creative things we can do (like games, social media, robots, etc.).
So this is an intermediary step that enables us to gain acceptance in their world,
and to be useful WHILE we educate them about what is possible. All of the BC docs will go for more progressive ideas -- they are risk-takers (not in the sense of treating patients, but in the sense of how to address this big, complex issue of pain management).
As an important part of the above, it is crucial that we stay in touch with them, which is difficult for only me to do. Meehae is good at that, but is on leave. I'm thinking that you and possibly Andrea would be good ambassadors too.
So, as part of your RA, can you please: • keep in contact with doctors when they email us:
Pam Squire Brenda Lau (Surrey Memorial) Linda Li (Arthritis Centre of Canada) Andrea Furlan (UofT, Workplace Canada, National Pain Centre)
and • help facilitate the lab visit for Linda Li and Andrea Furlan. As I mentioned, they were classmates in med school, but I don't know if they are friends or competitors. Linda's area is MSK (Arthritis, musculo-skeletal areas), so competition may not be an issue. BUT I get an undeniable sense that other PAIN BC folks are either in competition (Ontario has hoards more funding) OR just don't think that Andrea's direction is as important as others. For example, Andrea designed the Opioid Manager for doctors, but the responses I get is that most doctors simply don't have the time to use it (they have like 27 other tools, and Health Canada is forcing each to put all of their info online, which they don't get compensated for doing, AND they are stuck in this middle ground of treatments that are either unrecognized or under valued by Health Canada.) Linda Li is an incredibly quick study, values design and wants to innovate. She has a federal chair to do so. So it may be better to have two distinct lab visits . . . I'll talk to Linda to get a better sense. More work, but ultimately probably better for outcomes.
Also, Linda Li has funding for social media for a grad student and a postdoc! (Regularly, it seems.)
• UofT: keep in contact with Dr. Ron Baecker, & possibly Alison Benjamin, Jessica David Terry, we didn't get to this one, but we are working with Baecker on NCE GRAND things re: social media, and need to keep in touch with him. The best approach is FTF: to actually go there, or make sure he comes to our lab when he is in town. I'll go there in February and strategize what our next steps should be (2nd weekend in Feb.). If you can take the subsequent visits, that would help enormously. (Also, check out UofT's HCTP program for postdoc work.)
Options I discussed with him are to possibly: a) look at Alison Benjamin's studies to see what other papers we can derive from that info
please ask me for that tomorrow
b) I'll check with Jessica to see where her diary study is, but she doesn't want to
"work with sick people," so it either may wither, OR we may be able to pick it up
c) doing a study using Ron's picture frame d) conducting a study that piggybacks onto one of his -- we've been wildly productive
in doing this (his users: dementia patients)
e) doing a design evaluation of his picture frame
If we can figure out something that will attract his attention, we'll be golden. For instance, EVERYBODY loves our two papers based on Alison's studies (see CSCW this year). The CSCW paper is in the running for "best paper." In any case, starting 2 years ago, the computational conferences suddenly didn't ignore the issue of chronic pain, but are now interested in it. Dunno why -- may be because it is NOT "just" about health records. Please familiarize yourself with his TAGLab site (Technologies for Aging Gracefully). Please think about what we could do . . .
In general, by "staying in touch," I mean being responsive. They are all way too overloaded to want things like tweets, feeds or general inquiries, but I do send them a semi-annual update, esp. when we accomplish something. I also ping them when I find a potential grant or so on.
Help organize an NCE GRAND PI meeting (Gromala, Shaw; Baecker, Bartram, MacLean/UBC, Carpendale/Calgary, Gardner/OCAD)
DIscuss viability of organizing a brainstorming workshop w/ 6-8 local patients. They are itching to help, and I'd hate to lose their interest, but we have so many other things to do, so if we can find double-duty . . .
Finally , if you could keep an eye out for talented undergrads, that would help --
I no longer have regular contact with them . . .
