Dr. Brittany Dennis (MBBS, PhD) is a clinician scientist with training in general internal medicine and an area of focused competency in addiction medicine. Dr. Dennis has been awarded the 2023 Michael Smith Health Research BC/BCCSU Partnered Scholar award to support her leadership role on the research evaluation of the Road to Recovery Initiative. Dr. Dennis’ program of research within the BCCSU includes a collection of studies investigating emerging treatments and novel models of substance use care.
Dr. Dennis’ scholarship is highlighted by numerous accolades including the prestigious Michael Smith Health Research BC/BCCSU Partnered Scholar Award (2023), Hamilton Academy of Medicine Resident Award (2023), David L Sackett Award (2015), Paul O’Byrne Research Award (2021), and the CIHR Funded Intersections in Mental Health Perspectives in Addictions Care training fellowship (2014). Her PhD work alone received the outstanding thesis award for doctoral dissertations and garnered her a Valedictorian title.
As one of Canada’s first addiction focused research methodologists, her work has advanced the prioritization of patient important outcomes and directly informed methods to improve evidence synthesis, enhance measurement selection, increase generalizability, and enrich guideline development practices for studies evaluating therapies for patients who use substances. Pivoting to identify health inequities driving the imbalanced consequences of addiction, her work has also been foundational in establishing health disparities observed in female patients with substance use disorders. She’s successfully led observational studies addressing addiction-based issues, including prospective cohort designs establishing risk factors for treatment response, qualitative research evaluating patient important outcomes, and finally large database studies establishing trends in mortality and hospitalization for patients with substance use disorders.