On Wednesday May 8th 2024, the UBC Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology hosted the 24th edition of its annual Academic Day. This event is conducted every year to allow trainees from across the department to showcase the research they have been working on, through presentations to their fellow trainees, esteemed faculty members and department staff. This year in particular there was a strong presence of RID Program trainees presenting throughout the day, allowing for RID Program research to be particularly highlighted. The event was also hosted by RID Program leader, Dr. Deborah Money who is also the current head of the UBC Department of OBGYN, and she delivered both opening and closing remarks to the event.
The first RID trainees to present were PhD student Zahra Pakzad (upper left) and UBC MD student Amelia Tjoa, who presented during the first oral presentation session of the day which specifically focused on “Obstetrics Topics”. Their presentation entitled “Antepartum, intrapartum, and postpartum antimicrobial use in low risk, term pregnancies“, discussed their research on the use of antibiotics during the antepartum, intrapartum and postpartum periods in low risk term pregnancies at multiple BC hospitals and how this use compared to suggested/prescribed guidelines by various major societies/colleges of obstetricians and gynaecologists.
RID Clinical Research Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Wong also presented during this session (upper right), with his presentation entitled “Antepartum versus postpartum amoxicillin oral challenge in penicillin allergic pregnant patients: a two-center prospective cohort study“. This presentation was on the analysis conducted by Dr. Wong on the effectiveness of the only two penicillin allergy delabelling programs in the country for pregnant women (BCWH Penicillin Allergy Clinic in Vancouver, BC and The Penicillin Allergy Clinic in Winnipeg, MN), and how the different forms of allergy testing/challenge and follow-up visit/no follow-up visit affected the rates of delabelling of these allergies.
The next session with RID program trainees presenting, was the poster presentation session wherein presenters would explain their research project using a single slide/poster to the audience, in addition to presenting their physical posters during the more traditional-style poster sessions which occurred during the breaks throughout the day. During this single-presenter poster session, RID Clinical Research Fellow Dr. Jeffrey Wong presented on two occasions (bottom left), presenting posters on both “Hansen’s disease in pregnancy: a scoping review” and “Developing a Prediction Model for Preterm Birth for Women Living with HIV in British Columbia“.
At the end of this session, RID Program MSc student Sofia Nicolls also presented a poster (bottom right) entitled “Incidence of Human Papillomavirus Infection in Women Living with HIV in British Columbia“, which describes her current project that she is working on at the RID Program, which is looking to better understand the incidence rates of HPV in women living with HIV (WLWH) in BC through analysis of the data from a long-term follow-up cohort from one of the RID Program’s studies on the HPV vaccine in WLWH.
Overall, all trainees/members of the RID team did such an amazing job on presenting their fascinating and insightful work! Additionally, we would like to congratulate Dr. Jeffrey Wong who won the award for best oral presentation! For more info on the UBC Department of OBGYN Academic Day and the other speakers who presented, check out the agenda/abstract booklet here!