A multidisciplinary team at VGH’s Emergency Department has been screening patients for opioid use disorder since 2019. Eligible patients receive take-home Suboxone packages. (Suboxone is a first-line opioid agonist therapy in BC; there is evidence for its effectiveness when provided in emergency department settings.)
“We wanted to gather feedback from the many care providers involved in the program as well as from patients to understand which aspects of our program had been successful,” said Dr. Jessica Moe, a VGH emergency physician and assistant professor. “We applied for funding from VPSA’s Small Steps, Big Idea to find out how we could optimize our processes and make improvements.”
One phased project is Understanding Healthcare Provider and Patient Experiences with Emergency Department Suboxone led by Dr. Jessica Moe. Phase 2 of the project is gathering stakeholder feedback, while also prioritizing planning for sustainability. Dr. Moe is engaging with leaders at the department, hospital, and regional levels to share program successes along with valuable patient and provider feedback. This helps her advocate for improved point-of-care, patient-centred addictions services in the VGH Emergency Department. The current VPSA funding is also being used to build key relationships as well as infrastructure and patient and provider supports that will allow the Suboxone program to be sustained into the future.
We’re happy to announce the launch of our research team’s website: the Moe Lab. We are a research team at the University of British Columbia Department of Emergency Medicine. Our studies currently operate out of the Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital campus locations. For more information on our research and team, visit the “Research” and “Our Team” subpages!
From 2014 to 2019, the BCCDC Foundation for Public Health ran a pilot funding program called the Open Awards Program (OAP). The purpose of the OAP was to strengthen the research enterprise at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) by providing small pilot grants and seed funding to support research, knowledge translation, and convening activities that would enable researchers to secure larger funding awards. Spread over two competitions per year, we awarded up to $100,000 per annum to faculty members at the BCCDC, many of whom went on to secure grants from larger funding sources. Among other recipients, Dr. Jessica Moe was awarded to her research for Buprenorphine/naloxone Standard Dosing and Microdosing in the Emergency Department: A feasibility study (2019).
Dr. Jessica Moe and her team were awarded $1.3 million in funding over five years from the Health Canada Substance Use and Addictions Program. This grant will support their study that aims to optimize emergency department screening for opioid use disorder, and evaluate standard dosing and microdosing approaches to buprenorphine/naloxone inductions initiated in the ED setting.
Congratulations to member Jessica Moe who was recently awarded CIHR funding for her study, Preventing Opioid Deaths due to COVID Related Increase in Smoking Illicit Substances.
Dr. Moe is the principal applicant for the study, which is a collaboration between the BC Centre for Disease Control, the Health Ministry’s Overdose Emergency Response Centre, and BC Health Authorities.
Dr. Moe’s team will implement a novel, continuous oximetry protocol for people who smoke opioids at six partnering overdose prevention service (OPS) sites. This will allow for safe monitoring of clients’ oxygen levels while abiding by physical distancing required during COVID-19.
The study addresses a decline in visits to OPS since the pandemic onset, and a concurrent rise in smoking-related overdose deaths.
Congratulations to DEM Faculty Member Dr. Jessica Moe who recently received the 2019 Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) Mentored Clinician Scientist Award!
The VCHRI Mentored Clinician Scientist Award is a salary award that supports new clinician investigators who are building an early research career. Under the excellent mentorship of Dr. Corinne Hohl, Dr. Jess Moe was granted a 2019 MCS Award to support her project aiming to identify risk factors for adverse outcomes among frequent emergency department users, particularly those presenting with substance use, using linked system-level data in BC. Dr. Moe will receive $75,000 per year for two years with the possibility of renewal for an additional year to support the development of her research program.
Canadians from all walks of life have been profoundly impacted by the effects of problematic opioid use, and the crisis continues to claim lives at an alarming rate. By making investments in targeted, priority-driven research, CIHR can mobilize researchers to confront threats such as the opioid crisis, increasing awareness of the issue and our capacity to respond.
Through the Opioid Crisis Knowledge Synthesis operating grant, CIHR is supporting efforts to address the most urgent elements of the crisis, and to investigate strategies that could reduce opioid-related mortality rates.
A partnership with the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy, the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (CIHR-INMHA) and the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (CIHR-IHSPR), has invested over $1.8 million to support 22 projects, matching teams of researchers with knowledge users across Canada.
Drs. Corinne Hohl and Jessica Moe and their team at the University of British Columbia wanted to better understand the effectiveness of the opioid antidote naloxone on reversing overdoses due to increasingly common ultra-potent opioids such as fentanyl. They analyzed 174 studies that looked at naloxone administration to reverse non-medical opioid toxicity among 26,660 patients. They compared the dose of naloxone needed to reverse the effects of lower potency opiates such as morphine and heroin, compared to high-potency opioids. They determined that in North America, standard naloxone doses were less effective at reversing overdoses of fentanyl and its powerful new analogues, and these agents required higher overall doses to reverse their effects compared to heroin and other opioids. The study could have important implications for the development of first-responder treatment guidelines in communities with a high prevalence of ultra-potent opioids.
Future health care needs require visionary approaches to tackle the challenges confronting patients and their families today. From curing disease to improving quality of life, researchers are at the forefront of medical advances that support the health and happiness of patients and their families. For this reason, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) is proud to contribute to groundbreaking research with our annual Innovation and Translational Research Awards. This year’s eight recipients are putting new knowledge into practice, implementing research outcomes and turning discoveries into commercial opportunities.
Congratulations to Dr. Jessica Moe for recently receiving a CIHR travel grant to attend the Institute of Population and Public Health’s (IPPH) second annual “Starting Investigators Workshop” in Ottawa this June. This event is geared towards new population and public health researchers who have just become (or who are about to become) eligible to apply for CIHR funds for the first time. The goal of this event is to introduce starting investigators to CIHR, to give training/tips on applying for CIHR grants, to provide networking opportunities with more senior academics, and to make introductions to senior public health policymakers.
