Research Trainees

Jesse Charlton completed his Bachelor of Physical Education and Coaching at Douglas College where he focused on athletic development and coaching science. Thereafter, he completed his MSc in the Rehabilitations Sciences program at UBC. He is now a dual program MPT & PhD student in the same program, supervised by Dr. Michael Hunt. Over the last 4 years Jesse’s research has spanned many subject areas including exercise biomechanics, lung mechanics during cycling, and gait modification for knee osteoarthritis. Today, Jesse primarily focuses on conservative treatment strategies for knee osteoarthritis. Through clinical and biomechanical examinations of gait and gait modification, Jesse’s work aims to better understand the mechanisms underlying gait modification and how patients with knee osteoarthritis adhere to and retain these treatments. In addition to his current work, Jesse has interests in sport biomechanics, healthy aging, and masters athletics.

Kelsey is currently completing her Doctor of Medicine at the University of Calgary. She received a Master of Science in Medical Science from the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary under the supervision of Dr. Heinrike Schmeling and Dr. Cheryl Barnabe. In her thesis, she developed and evaluated the acceptability of an adolescent self-management program for juvenile idiopathic arthritis education. 

Kelsey has been actively involved in pediatric rheumatology research at the Alberta Children’s Hospital for several years. She continues to work on arthritis related research under the supervision of Dr. Cheryl Barnabe.  

Narsis is pursuing a Master’s of Science in Experimental Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia under the supervision of Dr. Antonio Aviña-Zubieta. She is studying potential retinal side effects of the Plaquenil / Hydroxychloroquine medication in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematous prospectively. Her thesis project title is “RetINal Toxicity And hydroxyChloroquine Therapy: A Prospective Population-based Cohort Study (INTACT)”.

She earned her MD and then completed her ophthalmology residency and retina specialty fellowship at the SBMU University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran. She is a clinician-scientist with about 10 years’ experience of research in the fields of medical basic science, ophthalmic disease, retinal disease and medical epidemiology. She has over 50 publications and over 600 citations of her research on Google Scholar and Scopus databases.

Jenny is a post-doctoral fellow supervised by Dr. Ian Graham in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, and Centre for Implementation Research at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. She is also a visiting post-doctoral fellow at Arthritis Research Canada. Jenny’s research interests lie in relational ethics, integrated knowledge translation and qualitative methodologies. Her post-doctoral work is centred around ethical issues experienced in partnerships between patients and academics in research.

Alex is completing a one-year research fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Diane Lacaille. For her current project, Alex is using population-based administrative health data to construct and validate a frailty index that can be applied to estimate susceptibility to adverse health outcomes among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis.

Lingyi Li is a PhD student in the Experimental Medicine program at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a trainee at Arthritis Research Canada. In 2017 she completed a Master’s degree in the same program at the UBC and was employed as a full-time data analyst at Arthritis Research Canada following her thesis defense.

During the past four years, she has been involved in different projects on treatment side effects for arthritis diseases. This work inspired her to pursue her PhD to help patients make more informed decisions regarding treatments. She will be studying the risk of multiple sclerosis among users of anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha medications, using the administrative datasets from four Canadian provinces. Her PhD training is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral Award. She is also the UBC Four Year Doctoral Fellowship Designate.

As a health geographer and health services researcher, Xiaoxiao Liu has a strong passion for examining health disparities and equity in access to care and determinants of health using spatial analysis, statistics, epidemiological analysis, and geographical information systems.

Currently, Xiaoxiao Liu is a Health System Impact Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary with health system partner Primary Health Care Integration Network within Alberta Health Services (AHS). Under the co-supervision of Dr. Deborah Marshall (University of Calgary), Dr. Alka Patel (AHS) and Dr. Judy Seidel (AHS). Xiaoxiao’s project aims to improve access to care by identifying service gaps between primary and specialty care (rheumatologist), which will provide evidence for understanding local needs and planning customized integrated care that is responsive to local issues.

Xiaoxiao Liu completed her PhD in Geography from the University of Calgary, with an emphasis on environmental health. Her PhD work focused on the effect of air pollution on hospitalizations for myocardial infarction. She holds a Master of Engineering in Geography Information Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Environment Sciences.

Justin Losciale earned his Bachelor in Science degree in Kinesiology from California State University, Northridge (USA) in 2013 and earned his clinical Doctorate in Physiotherapy from Duke University (USA) in 2017. He went on to complete a post-professional residency in sports physiotherapy at The Ohio State University (USA) in 2019. Today, Justin is a PhD student in Rehabilitation Sciences under the supervision of Dr. Jackie Whittaker at UBC. Justin’s research will focus on understanding the interactions between modifiable risk factors for knee osteoarthritis after knee injuries. This research will guide clinicians to the key items to target rehabilitation efforts in individuals following a knee injury.

Darren wants to investigate the socioeconomic impacts of osteoarthritis management with the goal of improving patients’ access to evidence-based services. Darren’s thesis is centered around the cost-effectiveness analysis and budget impact assessment of the Good Life with Osteoarthritis Denmark (GLA:D) program that is being offered at community rehabilitation clinics in Alberta. GLA:D is an eight-week standardized education and exercise program internationally recognized as an evidence-based clinical pathway and early intervention to manage osteoarthritis.

In her post-doctoral fellowship, Natalie is building upon her skills in analyzing large data sets to assess the natural history, long-term effects of medications, and contributors to negative outcomes in patients with lupus and other forms of inflammatory arthritis. Natalie held a CIHR Doctoral Research Award during her Ph.D. and has been granted a three-year CIHR Fellowship Award for her post-doctoral research.

Kamso is a doctoral student in the faculty of Community Health Science at the University of Calgary under the supervision of Dr. Glen Hazlewood and Dr. Rob Deardon. His research focuses on comparative effectiveness research which is a broad field of research that aims to provide ‘real-world’ estimates of treatment benefits and harms to help inform treatment decisions. Patients’ preferences for these benefits and harms should then be used to guide decision-making. Bayesian methods offer advantages as they facilitate the incorporation of multiple sources of evidence, while readily accounting for the uncertainty in their estimation. In this project, he will explore the use of network meta-analysis using Bayesian methods to synthesize comparative effectiveness research and evaluate the certainty of evidence from the results using the GRADE framework. His research will focus on rheumatoid arthritis treatment, which is of high interest to multiple stakeholders, given the increased availability of highly effective, but expensive treatment options.

Kasra is an international medical graduate from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran, and is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Experimental Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He has started his research under the supervision of Dr. Diane Lacaille. Using administrative data analysis, Kasra will be investigating the risk of adverse events, such as infections, malignancies, and mortality, associated with different classes of biologic agents used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Thalia’s research focuses on the psychological aspects of concussion recovery and finding ways to improve psychological care for concussion patients. Her research motivations stem from her own recovery from the injury. Her PhD focuses on exploring patient-related barriers to the adoption of evidence-based concussion care. Specifically, she wants to understand the relationships between patients’ perceptions of their injury, their help-seeking experience and coping strategies. The results of this research will be informative across disease groups, including arthritis.

For his PhD thesis, André will be looking at the relationships between rheumatic diseases and occupational outcomes, such as work disability, presenteeism and absenteeism. He will evaluate data obtained from “Making it Work”, a study designed to understand the effectiveness and cost-utility of a multidisciplinary e-learning program at preventing work cessation and improving at-work productivity. The research project resources were granted by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR).

Anh Pham is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Allyson Jones. She completed her PhD at the University of Alberta and her medical degree in Eastern Medicine at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Anh is interested in supporting community-dwelling older adults by improving quality of primary care. Her postdoctoral fellowship research focuses on using data from electronic medical records to study rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis and management in primary care. 

She is a big proponent of the Exercise is Medicine movement and using a comprehensive approach in clinical care. As such, her thesis will explore theory-based strategies for promoting exercise adherence among patients with knee osteoarthritis. This research aims to improve our understanding of how and why patients choose to engage in exercise in order to better inform future physical activity promotion interventions. With her overarching passion for supporting healthy behaviour changes in vulnerable populations, Smruthi plans to pursue a career as a clinician scientist.

Linda’s research focuses on understanding the role of social support after a traumatic knee injury. The goals of her research will be centered on identifying and integrating social support to interventions aimed at delaying osteoarthritis risk after a knee injury. This research will provide both researchers and clinicians strategies to leverage social support in clinical interventions and practice.

Vivienne is a PhD student at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University under the supervision of Dr. Hui Xie. She completed her Bachelor of Science Degree majoring in quantitative and population health sciences at Simon Fraser University in 2019. Upon graduation, she started working at Arthritis Research Canada as a research trainee. Her PhD research focuses on using novel statistical models to evaluate the impact of biological disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) on the risk of different outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis patients including risk of total joint arthroplasty, severe infection and cardiovascular events. The study’s findings will help policymakers make decisions about how to regulate and manage bDMARDs as an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.