The Evidence Speaks Series is a recurring feature highlighting the latest in Advancing Health research. This series features summaries of select publications and is designed to keep media and the research community up to date with the Centre’s current research results in the health outcomes field.
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Exploring the Cognitive Aspects of Walking in the Neighbourhoods among People Living with Dementia. Wong J, Chaudhury H, Seetharaman K, Randa-Beaulieu C, Hung L, Davies D, Ren LH. Gerontol. 2026
By 2050, over 1.7 million Canadians will have dementia. With many aging Canadians hesitating to move to care homes, developing supportive neighborhoods and built environments that promote autonomy and social participation is increasingly vital.
Walking helps preserve independence and cognitive and physical health in people with dementia. However, cognitive declines can cause navigation issues, anxiety, and disorientation. To explore how neighbourhood environments and cognition influence walking, researchers, including Advancing Health scientists Drs. Habib Chaudhury and Lillian Hung, conducted a study with 26 people with mild to medium dementia stages. During four interviews held over six months, five themes emerged: i) supported decision-making reduces anxiety, ii) planning strategies lessen stress, iii) routines in walking routes and frequency can help reduce disorientation, iv) paying attention helps with injury prevention, and v) technology use can support independence and motivation.
These findings highlight the role of familiarity and daily routines in supporting independence, the importance of planning walking routes, the challenges posed by the built environment, and the growing role of technology. Policymakers, urban planners, and researchers can use these findings to inform how they design dementia-inclusive communities, enhance supportive housing and social walking programs, as well as develop technologies that provide support for people living with dementia.
Population-Level Health Benefits and Harms Associated With Buprenorphine/Naloxone vs Methadone. Enns B, Guerra-Alejos BC, Min JE, Carter A, Siebert U, Nosyk B. JAMA Netw Open. 2025
Methadone and buprenorphine/naloxone (sometimes called Suboxone) are the two most common medications for the treatment of opioid use disorder, making them key tools in addressing the ongoing opioid epidemic. In 2017, the BC government changed its preferred first-line treatment from methadone to buprenorphine/naloxone based on research showing that although patients found methadone an easier treatment to keep taking, buprenorphine/nalaxone had a lower mortality risk. But the findings of these studies were limited by their short time frames.
To understand how two medications compared over the long term, a team of researchers, including Advancing Health scientist Dr. Bohdan Nosyk, and staff including Benjamin Enns, Brenda Carolina Guerra-Alejos, and Jeong Eun Min, analyzed anonymized health administrative data from all individuals who received opioid agonist treatment in BC from January 1, 2010, to March 17, 2020. They used a form of mathematical modelling called a semi-Markov cohort model, which analyzed the chance of participants moving between different health states: treatment with naloxone, treatment with methadone, out of treatment, long-term treatment, overdose, and death.
The study evaluated data from 40,461 people. Looking at ten years of data, the team compared outcomes from when methadone was the first line treatment, compared to when buprenorphine/naloxone was the first line treatment. They found that a policy of using buprenorphine/naloxone as a first line treatment was found to all together save 1,602 fewer years of life compared to a methadone policy. This included 221 additional fatal overdoses and 303 additional all-cause deaths. This suggests that the lower mortality rates associated with buprenorphine/naloxone seen in short-term research are overshadowed by challenges with long-term treatment retention. The evidence suggests that buprenorphine/naloxone should not be the primary first-line treatment and that participants should be empowered to choose between methadone and buprenorphine/naloxone treatment through shared-decision making with their physician.
COVID-19 infections without vaccination raises risk of developing type 2 diabetes for 3 years
Long‐Term Risk of Incident Type 2 Diabetes Following SARS‐CoV‐2 Infection: A Population‐Based Study in British Columbia, Canada. García HAV, Wong S, Jeong D, Naveed Z, Mahmood B, McKee G, Janjua NZ. DiabetesMetab Res Rev. 2026
COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, remains an ongoing health threat in Canada and globally. COVID-19 affects many systems within the body, and as a consequence may cause long-term health impacts, such as chronic fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath. Given the wide scope of these side effects, researchers wanted to see if COVID-19 infections increase a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
A team of researchers, including Advancing Health scientist Dr. Naveed Janjua, looked at health data from all BC patients who received a PCR COVID-19 test from 2020 to 2024. Excluding people who were already diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or who were living in long-term care homes, they analysed how many participants developed diabetes. To filter out people who were already diabetic, they only included people who developed diabetes 30+ days after receiving the COVID-19 test. Data for 2,044,421 people were analyzed. People who tested positive for COVID-19 were found to be at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This risk increased with severity of the COVID-19 infection and lasted for up to 3 years.
The findings also showed that there was no increased risk of diabetes among people who had received a COVID-19 vaccination and tested positive for COVID-19. This research highlights the importance of continuing to vaccinate and manage the spread of COVID-19, and the importance of monitoring COVID-19 patients long-term after recovery.
