It goes without saying that having a stroke is an incredibly scary and dangerous thing for a person to endure.
Imagine having two.
In Canada, 16 per cent of people who have had a stroke will experience a second one within a year of the first. Thirty-three per cent will experience another one within five years.
Dr. Brodie Sakakibara, associate professor in the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Southern Medical Program and the UBC Okanagan 2025 Health Researcher of the Year, dedicates his research to empowering stroke survivors to take recovery into their own hands, ensuring their chances of a second stroke—and other post-stroke complications—are drastically reduced.
What is a stroke?
A stroke is a loss of blood flow to part of the brain. When brain cells can’t get the oxygen and nutrients they need from blood, they start to die, often within a few minutes.
Strokes happen in one of two ways: the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or reduced—called an ischemic stroke—or a blood vessel in the brain leaks or bursts and causes bleeding in the brain—called a hemorrhagic stroke.
“Both are very serious medical emergencies,” says Dr. Sakakibara, also an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine’s Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management. “They can cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, even death.”
And yet, despite their serious nature, the survival rate for people suffering their first stroke is higher than 80 per cent.
Strokes tend to occur most often in people over the age of 55. An aging Canadian population combined with a high survival rate means the number of Canadian stroke survivors is expected to reach nearly three quarters of a million people in the next 15 years.
It’s those survivors Dr. Sakakibara is empowering with simple technology-delivered rehabilitation and self-management programs designed to improve their recovery and better manage their long-term health and wellbeing.
An empowering approach
Stroke care in hospital is provided to ensure survivors recover and can return home safely, as soon as possible.
“Our health system is very acute-focused, it’s reactionary—people go into the system because they had a stroke. But there’s little care for people once they’re discharged from that system and minimal focus on prevention of other events. [In our research], we look at stroke as a chronic condition, not acute,” says Dr. Sakakibara.
The issue, he says, is a lack of focus on chronic disease self-management. There’s not enough resources, education or information available to help people with stroke become better self-managers. In many instances, people who have had a stroke don’t receive enough support and continue living with risk factors that contributed to the stroke in the first place.
We use simple, existing technologies to bring these rehab and support services right into people’s homes and make it accessible to as wide a group as possible.
Dr. Brodie Sakakibara, Associate Professor, UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Southern Medical Program
Once people are discharged, there are very few resources they can access without having to return to the hospital. Some survivors live in small and remote communities. Others have limited mobility and other complications from their strokes. Dr. Sakakibara develops self-management support interventions for people to better handle life after stroke and delivers the support and resources to them online, in their homes and communities.
Individuals simply need access to the Internet and a computer or mobile device and they can participate in tailored rehabilitation and self-management support programs. Programs are delivered remotely by highly trained health professionals, including occupational therapists and physical therapists, and focus on stroke recovery, prevention and management.
“We use simple, existing technologies to bring these rehab and support services right into people’s homes and make it accessible to as wide a group as possible,” he says.
As Dr. Sakakibara studies the effectiveness of these technology-powered rehabilitation and self-management support solutions, it’s been shown clinically that these types of interventions after stroke reduce the chances of not only a secondary stroke, but other comorbid conditions like heart disease and diabetes, as well.
Saving the system
The work also reduces the strain on Canada’s overburdened health-care system.
By helping prevent stroke survivors from having a secondary event and preventing them from developing other co-morbid conditions, Dr. Sakakibara and his team are working to reduce the number of times survivors re-enter the health-care system to seek additional care.
“Self-management is decision making and problem solving,” says Dr. Sakakibara. “We can teach individuals to recognize signs and symptoms of a developing co-morbid condition, and we can teach them to make the necessary decisions to head it off and manage on their own instead of accessing acute or emergency services. It substantially decreases the health resources being used.”
It’s unique work, born of a desire to help people who would otherwise have no options, says Dr. Sakakibara.
“I feel it’s helping people. It’s just me—I see people struggle and I want to help,” he says. “Very few researchers and labs in the world are taking the approach of stroke as a chronic condition. It’s empowerment. It’s putting people back in control, letting them manage on their own and making them a key partner in their care for much better long-term outcomes.”
A version of this story was originally published on the UBC Okanagan Research and Innovation website.