The Project Team is chaired by the Site Coordinator, Catharine Hume. Members include each of the service leads, the research coordinator and members of the Vancouver Research Team and the principle investigators. The Project Team is the local decision making entity. Please read below for more information about team members.
VANCOUVER PROJECT TEAM BIOGRAPHIES
Sue Baker, At Home/Chez Soi Service Lead, Housing
Sue Baker oversees the Housing Portfolio Development for the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi project and is a member of the project team. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree with a major in Physical Education and English.
Sue is also the Director of Supported Housing for the MPA (Motivation, Power & Achievement) Society which she joined in 1990, and is responsible for the operation of its 12 supported housing programs. In the ensuing years Sue has enjoyed various progressive positions with the organization, starting as an Activities Coordinator at the Community Resource Centre, to her current position of operational leadership in Supported Housing.
Sue has contributed to numerous Multi-Agency Housing Committees, which have had a significant impact on the administration of Supported Housing in the Vancouver Area.
Jim Frankish, At Home/Chez Soi Co-Lead Principal Investigator
Dr. Jim Frankish is the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi project’s co-lead Principal Investigator. He is currently Professor and Director of the Centre for Population Health Promotion Research at UBC.
He is appointed in the College for Interdisciplinary Studies, and School of Population & Public Health (Medicine). Current projects are the 2010 Games & healthy inner city communities, service utilization by the homeless with mental illness, poverty & nutrition education, health literacy in street youth, and health regions & non-medical determinants of health. Recent studies focused on urban-rural migration in homeless, media advocacy & homelessness, measuring community capacity, indicators of healthy communities, and health promotion in primary care.
Jim is a member of a national research-training program on population-health interventions. He has worked with 34 disciplines/departments on more than 100 research projects. He created an innovative course (IHHS 200) on the meaning, measurement and determinants of health, and is creating a 'Health 101' course for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Jim served as Chair of the ‘Sociobehavioural Ethics Review Committee’ and is a Board Member of the Lookout Homeless Shelter Society. He is a member of the National Collaborating Centre on Determinants of Health.
Michelle Patterson, At Home/Chez Soi Research Coordinator
Dr. Michelle Patterson is the Research Coordinator for the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi project. She is also a Scientist and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University (SFU). She obtained a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Before joining SFU, she worked for three years at Yale University as co-director of Yale Anxiety and Mood Services, as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Yale Child Study Centre, and as a lecturer in the Department of Psychology.
Michelle's research interests focus on the intersection of housing, mental illness and addiction. She is interested in system-level integration and change within marginalized communities, and how systemic factors influence individual and collective perceptions of belonging and community.
Greg Richmond, At Home/Chez Soi Service Lead for Assertive Case Treatment
Greg Richmond is the Service Lead for the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi Assertive Case Treatment (ACT) Team. He is also an Associate Director at RainCity Housing and Support Society in Vancouver. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Simon Fraser University.
Greg has a particular interest in homelessness and has developed and implemented specialised outreach and supportive housing programs for homeless people with complex health concerns.
He has also worked with municipal, provincial and federal authorities to develop and evaluate responses to homelessness.
Tracy Schonfeld, At Home/Chez Soi Service Lead for Intensive Case Management
Tracy Schonfeld is the Service Lead for the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi Intensive Case Management (ICM) Team. She has worked in the non-profit mental health field for most of the past 20 years and is currently the Director of Community Services for Coast Mental Health. She is responsible for overseeing a low barrier front line drop in program in the Downtown South of Vancouver as well as a peer support training and employment program, a Homeless Outreach program and two housing programs.
The mandate of all of these programs is to engage and advocate for individuals who are underserved in the health/mental health system, many of whom are homeless or are at risk of being homeless and who may have substance use issues along with their mental health concerns.
Tracy (BA, BSW, RSW) holds a BA in Psychology, a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, a Certificate in Substance Abuse Counselling and is in the final year of her Master’s degree in Social Work.
Julian M Somers, At Home/Chez Soi Lead Researcher
Dr. Julian Somers is the Lead Researcher on the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi project. He is also an Associate Professor in SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences. His research focuses on the integration of services and information in order to reduce substance use problems and improve mental health in the population.
Julian (MSc, PhD, RPsych) completed his doctorate under G. Alan Marlatt in the area of addictions, and has collaborated extensively with branches of government on initiatives involving substance use and mental health. He has led Provincial and multi-jurisdictional projects in the areas of telehealth, primary healthcare reform, housing, and the corrections system.
Julian has held a number of academic and professional leadership positions, including Director of the UBC Psychology Clinic, President of the BC Psychological Association, and Director of the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction.
Reinhard Michael Krausz, At Home/Chez Soi Co-Lead Researcher
Dr. Michael Krausz is the Co-Lead Researcher on the Vancouver At Home/Chez Soi project. He also currently holds a number of other titles including Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology and Public Health University of British Columbia (UBC) and St. Paul`s Hospital, Providence Health Care Centre of Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences (CHEOS); Medical Director of the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction; Medical Director of the Regional Program for Complex Concurrent Disorders; Founding Fellow of the Institute of Mental Health at UBC; Member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC; Member of the Research Advisory Council of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research of the Canadian Centre of Substance Abuse (CCSA) of the Vancouver Foundation; Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation (WIF).
Michael (MD, PhD, FRCPC) started his professional career as a nurse in adolescent psychiatry working especially with young psychotic clients. After Medical School in Hamburg the H.Böckler Foundation awarded him a doctoral grant. He wrote his thesis on long-term course of schizophrenia starting in adolescence. In 1985 he started his residency in Adult Psychiatry until 1991. Parallel he wrote his PhD on “Psychosis and Addiction” evaluating the entanglement of severe mental illness and harmful use of psychotropic substances, which then became the major research focus of his further work. He became then responsible for major studies about mental illness among intravenous drug users with over 1000 individuals and especially the German Heroin trial as biggest randomized clinical trial in Addiction Research in Europe in this field. He could show, that it is possible to improve the most difficult to treat clients with the appropriate intervention and contributed to an important paradigm shift through clinical research. He founded and edited two scientific journals, which until now have a major impact in this area: European Addiction Research and Suchttherapie. He has over 250 publications and even more invited presentations as part of his scientific contributions to this point. After over 20 years in different positions in Germany he was selected as the first Providence BC Leadership Chair for Addiction Research in 2005.
Michael served on several Advisory Boards on international, national, provincial and City level in Germany and Canada, including the Senior Research Advisory Board from CCSA, the Research Advisory Council of the Michael Smith Foundation and the as Co Chair of the Collaboration for Change in Vancouver.