Michelle Man

Dr. Rob Petrella has always been interested in pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a family physician and a team player.

As a family physician-researcher, he’s learned from the country’s best in sport and exercise medicine, many based at UBC. His work in exercise and healthy aging at Western University led to numerous collaborations around the world including with UBC Faculty of Medicine researchers over the past three decades.

Dr. Petrella, recently appointed Head, Department of Family Practice, is now poised to lead a team which will create a national centre of excellence in sport and exercise medicine and ensure his department is recognized as the best in the country for innovations in delivery of care, reaching those at risk no matter who they are or where they live and educating the next generation of learners who understand the importance of generalism in the art and practice of medicine.

Who inspires you and why?

My family definitely inspires me every day in how to live and enjoy what I do — my parents, my wife and my kids.

In my career, when I started in family practice, Brian Hennen one of the first family physicians to become dean of a medical school in Canada, was my mentor. He inspired me to believe that as a family doctor I could combine being a researcher with family practice; that I could complete a PhD, see patients and do research at same time. That this was what family medicine could be for me and my patients.

Another inspiring mentor to me is Carol Herbert, a previous family practice department head at UBC, before becoming dean at Western University. She inspired me to think that as a family physician-researcher I could also lead large teams to tackle large, important problems facing patients, challenging physicians, researchers and their communities. This path including me leading a multidisciplinary research institute in Healthy Aging at the Parkwood Institute in London and a CIHR-funded research team in Canada and Finland investigating the therapeutic impact of exercise in diabetes while at Western. Dr Herbert was also instrumental in helping me consider this position at UBC.

Locally, I’m inspired by the sport and exercise medicine leaders whom I’ve known for more than 25 years, including Jack Taunton and Don McKenzie. Their work has moved beyond elite athlete care to exercise as a treatment for a range of conditions — they led that combining education, research and care from the outset.

The size and scope of the faculty of medicine at UBC also motivates me. We have more than 3,600 clinical and academic faculty in the Department of Family Practice alone — it’s inspiring, if not humbling! This motivates me to always consider the importance of creativity, innovation, engagement and listening to the wealth my faculty members have to offer UBC, our learners and our communities.

I am proud of our faculty too for being incredible educators. This year UBC was the only family practice program in the country to match all medical residency positions in the first iteration which is inspiring and means that we’re doing something right, but we can always do something better. It’s important that we ensure our learners get the best training experience and we, as citizens of BC, will get the best care as a result.

Certainly, the COVID-19 experience has challenged faculty and learners to adapt and pivot to meet the needs of training and our patients. We are meeting that need but also creating innovative ways to educate and deliver care that is built on the foundation of our program here at UBC. This too has been inspiring.

For you, what makes UBC different?

Family practice at UBC is the largest clinical program in the country — it is represented across the province — it is inclusive and provides settings that are diverse for education, research and care. There is a focus on rural, remote and Indigenous needs supported locally but also among organizations across sectors. Leadership is respected locally, but also nationally and internationally.

As I mentioned earlier, UBC has been “the” leader in sport medicine and the opportunity to lead a “reimaging” of sport and exercise medicine at UBC is unparalleled for our department and faculty but also for the province and Canada. Sport medicine had its birth at UBC and now has the opportunity to lead a new phase of national and international prominence for athletes and the public who can benefit from the power of exercise and a healthy lifestyle that is inclusive and accessible to all.

How do you like to recharge?

I enjoy exercising daily (with a soccer ball when I can), traveling, reading and meeting people — exploring is a big part of what our family and I like to do, in and beyond our community.

Best piece of advice:

Always make sure you’re in the right place at the right time. Look to those around you, seek guidance from your peers and be open to new points of view and perspective. Being prepared for opportunity is important. Make sure you’ve done the work, you’ve put in the time, know your own story and feel comfortable sharing it — and when your time comes, you’re ready for what presents itself.

First job:

I delivered newspapers and worked with my dad in his building and carpentry business (have to admit I wasn’t the best at it, but I enjoyed it).

The thing my wife and I try to instill in our children is a respectful work ethic. We both come from backgrounds where doing work was important and seen in a positive way — but also balanced with time away from work. Also, not just doing the work and putting in the time, but enjoying it — enjoying the work, the workplace and enjoying the path you take. The journey is the most important thing.

Secret talent:

I do enjoy soccer — from an early age and still now. My kids and I enjoy a healthy competition juggling the soccer ball whenever we can, even in the living room if we can’t get outside.

What are your main goals or aspirations?

From the family practice department standpoint, my goal is not just to be the biggest, but the best. We want to be the best in terms of providing our teachers opportunities to be successful; leading on research and education but also engaging out faculty, colleagues and learners in a way that extends to their providing the citizens of BC the care they expect.

As a leader here at UBC, my goal is to create a centre of excellence in sport and exercise medicine that is well-known across Canada, that leverages everything we’ve done to date and that also provides returns on the investments made.

We have a cutting-edge facility — the Chan Gunn Pavilion, shared between the faculty of education and the faculty of medicine with excellent clinicians and researchers — so there’s a great opportunity to build a really strong program here and then roll out the program across the province in what I would call a hub-and-spoke model so that all communities can access this excellence.

I also want to lay the groundwork for those future learners and faculty who come after me to jump in and create their own space. Through what lies ahead, I want to continue to have fun during my tenure as department head. That’s the goal — that I’m still enjoying the role I’ve been provided and inspiring others to enjoy their roles too.

Favourite spot in BC?

My family is new to BC, so we’re still exploring. We’ve visited the Okanagan, so we plan to spend more time there and enjoy the community. I’m looking forward to exploring more of BC when it’s safe to do so.

Dr. Sophia Frangou is the inaugural UBC President’s Excellence Chair in Brain Health. She has made major contributions to understanding the role of brain structure and function for mental health, and particularly to mechanisms promoting resilience to genetic risk to mood and psychotic disorders and to adversity.

Dr. Frangou is the recipient of many honours and awards including the Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the Teaching Award in Biological Psychiatry by the Society for Biological Psychiatry

Dr. Frangou is an influential advocate for diversity in academic psychiatry with specific focus on closing the gender gap in publishing, funding and leadership. She is the editor and author of “Women in Academic Psychiatry: A Mind to Succeed.”

What advice would you give women wanting to pursue a career in scientific research?

This is a two-part answer. First, it is important that we move away from stereotypes of success. Having a career is not the pinnacle of human existence. Empowerment means freedom to choose something you really like, something that excites you and gives meaning to your life. Then you have to figure out how to make it happen for you. So my general advice, for men and women, could be summed up as “Choose with your heart and plan with your head.”

Second, academic life presents with many challenges, but women face additional hurdles rooted in implicit societal preconceptions; things are changing for the better but at a slow pace. Success in academia depends on putting yourself forward (as opposed to waiting to be asked), putting yourself first (as opposed to prioritizing the needs of others) and promoting your own work (as opposed to letting the work speak for itself). Many women feel uncomfortable with all three but overcoming these internal barriers is critical if we are to close the gender gap in academia.

Who inspires you and why?

Inspiring people are all around us. Every day, I am reminded of the resilience of the human spirit as I witness the great fortitude and dignity people show when faced with the many challenges of mental disorders.

Amongst the scientific community, my hero is Marie Curie and I keep a picture of her in my office. I “met” Madame Curie when I was at primary school. I read her biography, written by her daughter Eve, and I was immediately and indelibly struck by the brilliance, resilience and humanity of this woman.

What sparked your interest in brain research?

The brain is the “ultimate frontier.” I am awestruck by its breathtaking beauty and astonishing complexity. It was only towards the last decade of the last century that the living human brain became accessible to direct empirical investigation. This coincided with the time I entered psychiatry and I could not pass up the opportunity to become a “brain explorer.” My personal research has since been intertwined with the rapid technological advances that give us new tools to address old and fundamental questions about the relationship between the brain and the mind, and about the influences of our genetic blueprint and environmental exposures on brain organization and function across the lifespan.

First job:

My first job was as a trainee psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry in London, UK. The Maudsley was created following a bequest by Henry Maudsley, one of Britain’s foremost mental scientists of the Victorian Era. His vision, which was revolutionary for his time, was to create a hospital dedicated exclusively to the care of the mentally ill combined with a university unit focused on teaching and research in mental conditions.

The Maudsley opened in 1927 and was probably the first center ever to integrate clinical care and research in psychiatry. It has since become an iconic institution because of its continued excellence and innovation in all fields of psychiatry. During my time, the Maudsley was home to some of the legends of our field. It was a dream job and a wonderful spring board for my own career in psychiatry.

What are the major challenges of psychiatry today?

Our field faces the twin challenges of discovery and implementation. On the discovery side, there is great societal pressure to find simple causes for mental illnesses and develop effective cures; like penicillin for infections.

We tend to disregard the great progress that has been made towards a better understanding of the causes of mental disorders because what we have discovered is that these disorders have complex genetic and environmental causes and are not amenable to easy fixes. In this respect, psychiatry is no different from cardiovascular medicine or cancer where scientists and clinicians are also trying to identify specific causal pathways within a maze of interacting risk factors. However, technological advances are giving us new tools, some beyond what we could have ever imagined a few years ago, so this is a great time for brain explorers who are brave enough to take on the challenge of complexity.

At the same time, we do know a lot about how to prevent mental illness and how to treat people suffering from mental problems. We do not have perfect answers but there is much we can do, such as focusing on common risk factors associated with social adversity and improving the assessment of patients using neuroscience tools that are already available.

So immediate improvements are possible but they require substantial change in the way we train the new generation of clinicians and in the way we deliver services. In order to deliver next-generation services, we need societal investment which has not traditionally been as available for mental health as for other aspects of medicine. This means that advocacy and engagement with public health policy are vital for advancing mental health.

How to do like to recharge?

Sleep is a great favourite; it’s the time when all the “good plasticity” happens in the brain, especially in consolidating and strengthening connections between brain cells.

Best piece of advice?

This comes from a poem called “Go to the limits of your longing” by Rainer Maria Rilke and it goes like this: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

What are your main goals and aspirations?

What makes science so exciting is that you follow a path but you can never really fully predict where it may lead you; discovery is by its very nature surprising because you find something new which is often unexpected. I hope that as part of this process I will be able to make a positive impact on people’s mental health.

It snowed in May one year when Dr. Lakshmi Yatham was working as a junior faculty member in psychiatry at Dalhousie University in Halifax. In search of warmer weather, he began to consider returning to India when an unexpected opportunity for an academic position in Vancouver changed everything. He fled waist-deep snow in Halifax to attend an interview at UBC in February, where instead of towering snow banks, he encountered sprouting flowers and mountainous vistas. That was more than 25 years ago, and he never looked back.

Dr. Yatham has spent much of his career focusing on bipolar disorder. He believes that bipolar disorder is the most biologically-based mental illnesses and is the one that is most likely to see the biggest breakthroughs in psychiatric medicine. He is passionate about the difference that treatment can make in the lives of people living with bipolar disorder.

Who inspires you and why?

My inspiration is my mentor Ted Dinan, a psychiatry professor at the University College Cork, Ireland. He’s the one who got me into research. One of the unique things about Ted is that he’s someone who has this uncanny ability to almost see the future. Whatever he’s working on now is going to be the most popular thing five years on. He started working on gut microbes six or seven years ago. It’s the big thing now. Everybody’s talking about the bugs in our gut that influence everything from depression, to anxiety, to Alzheimer’s, cancers — everything.

For you, what makes UBC different?

Lots of things make UBC different. One is that UBC is a very ethnically diverse, multicultural university.

The second thing is that the Department of Psychiatry, as part of the only medical school for all of BC, is probably one of the most geographically diverse departments in Canada, if not North America or the world. 

The third thing is the university’s unique location. We’re a gateway to the Pacific Rim countries, which provides wonderful opportunities for us to collaborate with researchers in China, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, etc. Through these collaborations, we can not only learn and advance research but also influence psychiatry practice in many parts of the world.

How do you like to recharge?

I play tennis and golf. Any time I’m feeling overwhelmed, taking time to play golf or tennis helps. Often, at the end of a long day, when I am feeling exhausted and don’t feel like doing anything, sometimes, I force myself to go to the tennis club either to work out or play tennis and that makes me feel completely refreshed.

Best piece of advice:

For myself, I read a quotation that goes something like this: “Worrying is like paying debt that you don’t owe.” I try to remind myself that my worrying has zero impact in terms of the outcome. If anything, worry is going to affect me negatively, rather than helping to solve the problem.

In terms of young people, my advice is focus. If you have a million ideas and you go many different ways, you’re never going to be an expert. You’ve got to figure out what you like the most and then try to focus.

For leaders, once you’re in a leadership position, it’s not about you anymore; it’s about other people. Try to do what you can to help people realize their full potential. If you do that, then things will fall into place. Looking after people is the bottom line.

First job:

My first job was an intern after medical school in Bangalore, India.

Secret talent:

I’m actually a good cook. I don’t usually cook, but I have the ability to make good food.

As the head of the Department of Psychiatry, what are your main goals or aspirations? 

One of the things that we want to do is further build upon the close working relationships that the Faculty of Medicine has fostered with the provincial ministries of health and mental health and addictions. We want to positively enhance and support health care planning and delivery within BC that is evidence-based in order to improve outcomes for our patients with mental health conditions. 

The second thing would be to build greater expertise in areas that will have significant impact in terms of improving patient care and outcomes. We have some expertise in early intervention strategies and we want to build on this both from the research and the clinical perspective in order to facilitate better outcomes for our patients. Another key area is concurrent disorders, (people who have psychiatric illnesses along with substance use disorders). These people often seem to fall between the cracks in terms of access to evidence based healthcare, and we want to build expertise in this area to support people with such conditions.

Finally, in the Department of Psychiatry, we have 700 clinical faculty distributed throughout the province and I want to improve our efforts to engage with them, so they feel that they’re an integral part of the department, contributing to teaching, research and clinical care. 

Favourite spot in BC?

I like the Okanagan. I very much enjoy going to Kamloops, Osooyos and Vernon. I like the wineries, all those orchards and, of course, the boating and other recreational activities. That area also has beautiful golf courses.