February 22, 2023
Dr. Tania Lam, UBC Education professor and principal investigator, and team were awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grant for their research project, The PELvUS Study. Co-applicants include Drs. Andrea Bundon (UBC Faculty of Education), Andrei Krassioukov (UBC) and Matthias Walter (University of Twente).
The CIHR Project Grant program supports research projects with the greatest potential for important advances in fundamental or applied health-related knowledge, health care, health systems, or health outcomes. The best ideas may stem from new, incremental, innovative, or high-risk lines of inquiry or knowledge translation approaches.
The aims of The PELvUS Study, short for Pelvic floor Exercise to Lessen Urinary incontinence and Sexual dysfunction in people with spinal cord injury, are to explore how to prescribe pelvic floor muscle exercises to people with spinal cord injury and understand what effect this type of training could have on bladder and sexual health.
New strategies for improving bladder and sexual health after a spinal cord injury are desperately needed to improved the quality of life of patients who have been severely affected by their injury. Dr. Lam and team hope that the results of their study will open new areas of research for using exercise-based strategies to improve bladder and sexual health after a spinal cord injury.
