The use of evidence to guide decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic: divergent perspectives from a qualitative case study in British Columbia, Canada.

Background: The challenges of evidence-informed decision-making in a public health emergency have never been so notable as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions about the decision-making process, including what forms of evidence were used, and how evidence informed-or did not inform-policy have been debated.

Methods: We examined decision-makers' observations on evidence-use in early COVID-19 policy-making in British Columbia (BC), Canada through a qualitative case study.

Investigating the influence of institutions, politics, organizations, and governance on the COVID-19 response in British Columbia, Canada: a jurisdictional case study protocol.

Background: Research on public health responses to COVID-19 globally has largely focused on understanding the virus' epidemiology, identifying interventions to curb transmission, and assessing the impact of interventions on outcomes. Only recently have studies begun to situate their findings within the institutional, political, or organizational contexts of jurisdictions. Within British Columbia (BC), Canada, the COVID-19 response in early 2020 was deemed highly coordinated and effective overall; however, little is understood as to how these upstream factors influenced policy decisions.

Exploring the Contributions of Combined Model Regional Medical Education Campuses to the Physician Workforce.

Purpose: Physician shortages and maldistribution, particularly within family medicine, have led many medical schools worldwide to create regional medical campuses (RMCs) for clerkship training. However, Canadian medical schools have developed a number of RMCs in which all years of training (i.e.

Pedagogical considerations for the teaching of evaluation.

Pedagogy and andragogy refer to the philosophical and empirical assumptions that instructors make about what and how people learn. These assumptions guide much of the subsequent instructional design process, including learning objectives, learning experiences, assessment techniques, and more. Most of the existing literature in evaluator education is descriptive in nature, and there has been limited attention to research on pedagogy specific to evaluation or identification of effective practices for teaching evaluation.

The regional medical campus model and rural family medicine practice in British Columbia: a retrospective longitudinal cohort study.

Background: Regional medical campuses have been implemented across North America to address gaps in the physician workforce. We report findings from a study that examined the association between a combined model of regional medical campuses and students' decision to enter rural family medicine practice.

Methods: In 2004, the University of British Columbia added 2 regional medical campuses, 1 in a large population centre in a rural and coastal context and 1 in a medium-sized population centre in an isolated northern and rural context.

Evaluating the Quality of Health Professions Learning Environments: Development and Validation of the Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES).

The learning environment can be broadly conceptualized as the physical, social, and psychological context in which learning and socialization takes place. While there is now an expectation that health professions education programs should monitor the quality of their learning environment, existing measures have been criticized for lacking a theoretical foundation and sufficient validity evidence. Guided by Moos's learning environment framework, this study developed and preliminarily validated a global measure of the learning environment.

The home food environment and associations with dietary intake among adolescents presenting for a lifestyle modification intervention.

Background: The home food environment may be an important target for addressing adolescent obesity. The aim of this study was to investigate associations between aspects of the home food environment and the diets of adolescents who present for obesity treatment.

Methods: Cross-sectional baseline data were collected from 167 overweight/obese adolescent-parent pairs participating in an e-health lifestyle modification intervention.

Readiness for Residency: A Survey to Evaluate Undergraduate Medical Education Programs.

Background: Health professions programs continue to search for meaningful and efficient ways to evaluate the quality of education they provide and support ongoing program improvement. Despite flaws inherent in self-assessment, recent research suggests that aggregated self-assessments reliably rank aspects of competence attained during preclerkship MD training. Given the novelty of those observations, the purpose of this study was to test their generalizability by evaluating an MD program as a whole.

A qualitative study exploring how school and community environments shape the food choices of adolescents with overweight/obesity.

This study explored perceived barriers and facilitators to healthful eating in schools and communities among overweight teens who completed an E-health intervention. Twenty-two teens were recruited to a photovoice study and asked to take pictures of things that made it easier or harder to make healthful food choices at school and in their community. Digital photographs were reviewed using semi-structured interviews.

Experiences of overweight/obese adolescents in navigating their home food environment.

Objective: To explore perceived factors that impede or facilitate healthful eating within the home environment among overweight/obese adolescents.

Design: In the present qualitative photovoice study, participants were instructed to take photographs of things that made it easier or harder to make healthful food choices at home. Digital photographs were reviewed and semi-structured interviews were conducted to promote discussion of the photographs.

Parent-child associations in selected food group and nutrient intakes among overweight and obese adolescents.

Few studies have compared parent-child dietary intake among adolescents who are overweight or obese. The purpose of our study was to determine the relationship between parent-teen intake of selected dietary components among this sample. Baseline data from 165 parent and adolescent (aged 11 to 16 years) pairs who presented for a lifestyle behavior modification intervention were collected between 2010 and 2012.

Impact of a regional distributed medical education program on an underserved community: perceptions of community leaders.

Purpose: To describe community leaders' perceptions regarding the impact of a fully distributed undergraduate medical education program on a small, medically underserved host community.

Method: The authors conducted semistructured interviews in 2007 with 23 community leaders representing, collectively, the education, health, economic, media, and political sectors. They reinterviewed six participants from a pilot study (2005) and recruited new participants using purposeful and snowball sampling.

School and community predictors of smoking: a longitudinal study of Canadian high schools.

Objectives: We identified the most effective mix of school-based policies, programs, and regional environments associated with low school smoking rates in a cohort of Canadian high schools over time.

Methods: We collected a comprehensive set of student, school, and community data from a national cohort of 51 high schools in 2004 and 2007. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to predict school and community characteristics associated with school smoking prevalence.

The readiness for clerkship survey: can self-assessment data be used to evaluate program effectiveness?

Purpose: To examine whether or not aggregated self-assessment data of clerkship readiness can provide meaningful sources of information to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program.

Method: The 39-item Readiness for Clerkship survey was developed during academic year 2009-2010 using several key competence documents and expert review. The survey was completed by two cohorts of students (179 from the class of 2011 in February 2010, 171 from the class of 2012 in November 2010) and of clinical preceptors (384 for class of 2011 preceptors, 419 for class of 2012 preceptors).

Exploring the role of social capital in supporting a regional medical education campus.

Introduction: To help address physician shortages in the underserved community of Prince George, Canada, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and various partners created the Northern Medical Program (NMP), a regional distributed site of UBC's medical doctor undergraduate program. Early research on the impacts of the NMP revealed a high degree of social connectedness. The objective of the present study was to explore the role of social capital in supporting the regional training site and the benefits accrued to a broad range of stakeholders and network partners.

Impact of tobacco advertising and promotion on increasing adolescent smoking behaviours.

Background: The tobacco industry denies that their marketing is targeted at young nonsmokers, but it seems more probable that tobacco advertising and promotion influences the attitudes of nonsmoking adolescents, and makes them more likely to try smoking.

Objectives: To assess the effects of tobacco advertising and promotion on nonsmoking adolescents' future smoking behaviour.

Search Strategy: We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Group specialized register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, Sociological Abstracts, PsycLIT, ERIC, WorldCat, Dissertation Abstracts, ABI Inform and Current Contents to August 2011.

Nature and nurture in the family physician's choice of practice location.

Introduction: An understanding of the contextual, professional, and personal factors that affect choice of practice location for physicians is needed to support successful strategies in addressing geographic maldistribution of physicians. This study compared two categories of predictors of family practice location in non-metropolitan areas among undergraduate medical students: individual characteristics (nature), and the rural program component of their training program (nurture). The study aimed to identify factors that predict the location of practice 2 years post-residency training and determine the predictive value of combining nature and nurture variables using administrative data from two undergraduate medical education programs.

Evaluation of a violence risk assessment system (the Alert System) for reducing violence in an acute hospital: a before and after study.

Objectives: To investigate the effectiveness of a risk assessment system in reducing the risk of violence in an acute care hospital in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Methods: Hospital violence incident rates (number of incidents/100,000 work hours) were calculated and compared pre, during and post implementation of the Alert System, a violence risk assessment system, at one acute care hospital. Poisson regression models were used to examine the effect of the Alert System on hospital-level violent incident rates.

Adolescent smoking: effect of school and community characteristics.

Background: A substantial challenge in addressing adolescent tobacco use is that smoking behaviors occur in complex environments that involve the school setting and larger community context.

Purpose: This study provides an integrated description of factors from the school and community environment that affect youth smoking and explains variation in individual smoking behaviors both within and across schools/communities.

Methods: Data were collected from 82 randomly sampled secondary schools in five Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland, and Labrador) during the 2003-2004 school year.

The influence of school policies on smoking prevalence among students in grades 5-9, Canada, 2004-2005.

Introduction: School characteristics may account for some of the variation in smoking prevalence among schools. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between characteristics of school tobacco policies and school smoking prevalence. We also examined the relationship between these characteristics and individual smoking status.

Do students' perceptions of school smoking policies influence where students smoke?: Canada's Youth Smoking Survey.

Objective: The objective of this study was to explore students' perceptions of school policy characteristics that influence the location of smoking while at school.

Methods: Data were collected from a nationally representative sample of Canadian youth in grades 7-12 as part of the 2006-2007 Youth Smoking Survey. We used multilevel logistic regression to examine how students' perceptions of school policies predicted smoking behavior on and off school grounds in 11,881 students who had ever smoked.

School smoking policy characteristics and individual perceptions of the school tobacco context: are they linked to students' smoking status?

The purpose of this study was to explore individual- and school-level policy characteristics on student smoking behavior using an ecological perspective. Participants were 24,213 (51% female) Grade 10-11 students from 81 schools in five Canadian provinces. Data were collected using student self-report surveys, written policies collected from schools, interviews with school administrators, and school property observations to assess multiple dimensions of the school tobacco policy.

Characterizing violence in health care in British Columbia.

Background: The high rate of violence in the healthcare sector supports the need for greater surveillance efforts.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to use a province-wide workplace incident reporting system to calculate rates and identify risk factors for violence in the British Columbia healthcare industry by occupational groups, including nursing.

Methods: Data were extracted for a 1-year period (2004-2005) from the Workplace Health Indicator Tracking and Evaluation database for all employee reports of violence incidents for four of the six British Columbia health authorities.