Dr. Heather Gainforth has a singular principle that drives her research and her career.
“At the end of the day, everything I do is in service to the communities that benefit from my work.”
That work—seeking to inject meaningful community engagement into all aspects of university research projects—received national recognition today when Dr. Gainforth, Associate Professor in the UBC Faculty of Health and Social Development and ICORD Associate Director of Meaningful Engagement, was named the SSHRC Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Research Coproduction and Implementation Science.
“It’s huge,” she says. “Being a CRC is not only an honour, but it helps protect my time to better conduct my research and better service communities—I can show up so much more in the ways I want to.”
The CRC program is designed to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds in engineering, natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences. Dr. Gainforth’s appointment was announced October 22 by the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions.
Dr. Gainforth’s work involves ensuring people with lived experience are engaged throughout the research process. Her field of research most often involves supporting people living with a spinal cord injury to thrive after their injury.
“ICORD is extremely proud of Heather and the work she’s doing to bring researchers and knowledge users—people with lived experience of SCI, community partners, health care providers—together. I’m delighted to see her commitment to meaningful engagement recognized by the CRC,” said ICORD Director Dr. Brian Kwon.
As a behavioural scientist, she’s seeking to change the behaviour of researchers themselves—to have them reevaluate the ways in which they conduct research to ensure their projects fully engage the communities for whom they conduct their research.
“So, in my work, for example, it’s not about doing research for people with spinal cord injuries, but doing research with them to ensure our research is relevant, useful and impactful.”
She leads a team that has developed guiding principles that help researchers working on partner-based research—often with communities experiencing chronic conditions like spinal cord injury—to conduct quality, ethical research that is relevant, useful and avoids tokenism. The principles are meant to be used by all partners throughout the research process and are starting to be adopted by researchers across Canada, fundamentally changing the national research environment for the better.
Some funding bodies are now even recommending researchers use the principles in funding applications, and some community agencies require their use in order for researchers to partner with them.
At ICORD, Dr. Gainforth co-leads the Meaningful Engagement Committee (MEC), a cross-campus committee of ICORD researchers, trainees, and partners with lived experience working together to strengthen how engagement happens within SCI. The MEC will launch their Strategic Plan, a roadmap for embedding meaningful engagement across ICORD’s research, training, and community initiatives, on October 28.
Dr. Gainforth’s CRC appointment recognizes her as an emerging leader in her field and helps her dedicate more time specifically to conducting research. She hopes to use the increased time to continue to support transformational change in spinal cord injury research, evaluate the systems she and her team are changing and support other groups interested in engagement.
“Ten years ago, when I started looking at how to transform our research systems to meaningfully engage the communities who use our research, it felt risky. I was critiquing the very system in which I worked,” she says. “With this appointment, it’s wonderful to know the Canada Research Chairs Program, and UBCO, see the value in this work. I’m grateful for their support.”
A version of this story originally appeared on the UBC-Okanagan Research and Innovation page.
