Edmond Chan
Edmond Chan, the Head of the Division of Allergy and Immunology in the UBC Department of Pediatrics, has been awarded the Jerry Dolovich Award from the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (CSACI).
The Jerry Dolovich Award is given to a CSACI member who demonstrates excellence in clinical work, teaching and research, and serves as a leader and role model in the field.
In addition to seeing patients at BC Children’s Hospital, Dr. Chan, a Clinical Associate Professor, conducts research into all clinical aspects of food allergy, including prevention, diagnosis, and management. He has worked to bridge the gap between research findings and translation into clinical care, and taken an active role nationally in health advocacy as lead author of the first Canadian position statement on allergy prevention and dietary exposure in high-risk infants, representing both the Canadian Paediatric Society and the CSACI.
He was the only Canadian member (and one of only two non-Americans) sitting on a U.S. National Institutes of Health expert panel that issued detailed guidelines in January about feeding peanut to infants.
Dr. Chan has examined current practices among pediatricians, dieticians, family physicians, and parents on dietary exposures and allergy prevention; investigated parents’ confidence, knowledge and skill in using epinephrine auto-injectors; collaborated on national studies for peanut and seafood allergy and participates in a clinical trial for cow’s milk immunotherapy. He helped create a multi-disciplinary clinic at BC Children’s Hospital dedicated to eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), an allergic inflammation of the esophagus; it is the only clinic dedicated to EoE in Canada, and as part of that, he has created an EoE registry to better examine incidence of the condition in certain ethnic groups, the effectiveness of eliminating cow’s milk from the diet, and the effects of treatment on adrenal suppression.
Other research projects include: clinical trials for epicutaneous peanut immunotherapy; studying the association between food allergy and anxiety; development and evaulation of an e-health tool to educate the general public about food allergy; and examining the barriers and solutions towards greater adoption of oral food challenges. Quality improvement projects include collaboration with Child Health BC and Public Health Nurses to educate parents about peanut introduction in infants, and implementation of pre-school peanut oral immunotherapy outside of research.