UBC Faculty of Medicine community members are among the recipients of funding from UBC’s Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism (StEAR) Enhancement Fund.
In September 2023, the UBC Equity & Inclusion Office (EIO) launched a re-imagined enhancement fund to support student, faculty and staff-led initiatives that seek to advance equity and anti-racism priorities.
The new fund provides an annual recurring investment of $100,000 from the EIO to sponsor community-led initiatives. For the 2023/2024 academic year – and to kick-off the relaunch – UBC provided an additional $200,000 for a total of $300,000 in available funding.
A total of 41 student, faculty and staff-led projects have been funded across UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan.
“The StEAR Enhancement Fund is an important mechanism to promote community engagement and projects that address needs specifically identified by students, faculty and staff,” says Arig al Shaibah, Associate Vice-President, Equity and Inclusion. “While additional investments are being made to support institutional-led initiatives, this fund aims to catalyze change by supporting innovative community-led efforts.”
The StEAR Fund is designed to contribute to the broad goals of the university’s StEAR Framework and Roadmap for Change. Projects must align with one or more of the thematic streams: racial, disability, gender and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ equity.
Faculty of Medicine recipients:
Racial Equity Stream
- Project title: Peer 2 Peer Mentorship Program
Applicant: Post Graduate Medical Education (PGME) Office
Project description: The Peer to Peer (P2P) Mentorship program seeks to provide additional enhanced support to some of the groundbreaking work done by the PGME office. The PGME office is utilizing a multi-pronged approach to equity, diversity and inclusion within medicine: first with an anti-racism self-reflection tool, then modules. As a follow-up to these aforementioned prongs, we hope to create the P2P program so peer resident mentors (with the guidance of faculty) can facilitate debriefing sessions dedicated to valuable post-module and self-reflection conversations. Through these debriefing sessions, we not only maximize the knowledge transfer process, but also create relationships for attendees to ask critical questions. This nuanced approach ensures that our educational efforts are both comprehensive and tailored to incredibly challenging and complex topics.
- Project title: Expanding seed2STEM: Extending the impact of the Summer Research Program for Indigenous Youth
Applicant: The International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), UBC School of Biomedical Engineering and BC’s Gynecologic Cancer Initiative
Project description: Our goal is to increase the number of Indigenous people in STEM. In 2018, ICORD developed the seed2STEM program, offering paid STEM research internships to Indigenous youth, normalizing Indigenous participation in research teams and fostering awareness of barriers faced by Indigenous peoples pursuing STEM careers. We seek to expand seed2STEM to offer cancer research internships through the Gynecologic Cancer Initiative.
Disability Equity Stream
- Project title: Recreational Adaptive Devices (RAD) Project
Applicant: Dr. William Miller, Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy
Project description: Adaptive devices (ADs) can help people with mobility limitations (PWML) participate in outdoor activities but are expensive. We, with community and campus partners, aim to provide low barrier access to ADs at UBC Vancouver. We will 1) Understand user needs, 2) Establish a low-cost equipment facility (GearBox) at UBC for sharing ADs via a mobile app, and 3) Evaluate user experiences. We aim to sustainably deliver ADs to the community at a nominal fee, enhancing the accessibility of outdoor activities for PWML so they can fully experience and participate in outdoor recreational activities within and beyond the UBC campus.