Spotlight paper in the Journal of Liver Transplantation: Chloe Wong-Mersereau
The Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program (CDTRP) wishes to congratule Chloe Wong-Mersereau, a trainee with the CDTRP and research assistant on the Frictions of Futurity and Cure in Transplant Medicine project, for her article titled “Layered Methodologies: Innovating Multimodal Qualitative Research in Liver Transplantation” published in the Journal of Liver Transplantation. Fraser Allan Best (CDTRP patient partner) and Alexandra Frankel (CDTRP trainee) are also co-authors along with colleagues and Co-PIs, Dr. Suze Berkhout and Kelly Fritsch.
These collaborative efforts stem from 2022 CDTRP Research Innovation Grant for the project “Temporalities of Cure: A qualitative study of psychosocial support needs and long-term survivorship in liver transplantation” (read more here).
Chloe’s exceptional skills and dedication to advancing liver transplantation research are evident in her exploration of innovative qualitative research methods and her ability to integrate various methodologies. Her contributions to the field are invaluable, and we are proud to have her as a member of the CDTRP.
We have asked Chloe a series of questions about the article, that you can read below.
How does the article address the complexity of liver transplantation and the need for a multidisciplinary approach?
The “Layered Methodologies” article brings attention to aspects of liver transplantation that are difficult to put into words by engaging with multiple ways of understanding a transplant recipient’s experience. A multidisciplinary and multimodal approach, in this case, connecting storytelling, filmmaking, with discourse and social science research, became the necessary way of exploring the unarticulated complexities of liver transplantation.
Are there any specific insights or findings mentioned in the article that could potentially impact the field of liver transplantation?
The insights invite qualitative research in transplantation to critically engage with power dynamics that implicate liver transplant recipients in both the clinic and the research spaces. Health care professionals who viewed the films, were reminded that their patients are people leading full complex lives. While this reminder is not revolutionary, the weight of transforming people into patients through clinical interactions is a powerful one.
What are some of the potential applications or implications of the layered methodologies discussed in the article?
Layering methodologies enable a wider range of exploring experience by engaging people with their multiple senses and means of expression. Co-creation grants transplant recipients the power to reclaim control and agency over the creation and retelling their stories.
What are the next steps for the Frictions of Futurity in Transplant Medicine project team and how could CDTRP help out?
The Frictions of Futurity team is entering a new phase of analysis, dialogue and sharing the research creations. The CDTRP has generously hosted avenues for us to share the films through screening events and engage in meaningful discussion with patients, families, and donors.
Abstract
Qualitative liver transplantation studies frequently explore quality of life and offer insights for integrating patient-oriented outcomes into conventional research strategies. The scope of qualitative research in liver transplantation tends to be limited, however, with respect to engagement with critical theories, leaving certain aspects of lived experience unexamined. We describe the process of layering multiple modes of critical qualitative research in liver transplantation, exploring how experiences in liver transplantation are structured through power and words, and what aspects of recipients’ stories are not easily spoken or shared. This study pairs a critical discourse analysis of patient manuals from a Canadian liver transplant program with the digital storytelling of liver transplant recipients. A common narrative emerges from patient manuals that does not adequately capture the complexity of lived experience of liver transplant survivors. Digital storytelling opens new narrative possibilities by layering sensory aspects of the transplant experience, which are often difficult to articulate through words. This complicates common ideas of survivorship, who is considered a “good” patient, and the cultural tropes that transplant stories frequently engage.
Special Feature in Ars Medica Journal: Frictions of Futurity, Curative Tensions, and Artistic Reimaginings of Transplantation
Chloe, Kelly and Suze have also co-edited a special issue of the arts and health journal, Ars Medica which is a special issue on transplantation. Their editorial, titled “Frictions of Futurity, Curative Tensions, and Artistic Re-imaginings of Transplantation“, features creative works by people with lived experience of transplant and families of transplant recipients as well as donors and people in health care, who are working in the arts and health.
About the Journal
Ars Medica is one of Canada’s first health humanities journals. Launched in 2004, we transitioned in 2014 to a web-only format. Ars Medica provides an online venue for dialogue, meaning-making, and the representation of experiences of the body, health, wellness, and encounters within the medical system. Content includes narratives from patients and health care workers, including fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. We also include sections on writing by and about children, international health, and other voices routinely silenced in the healthcare system.
About Chloe Wong-Mersereau
Chloe Wong-Mersereau (she/her) completed her master’s in social cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. She is currently a research trainee with the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program and a research assistant on the Frictions of Futurity and Cure in Transplant Medicine project. Her research interests include patient engagement in research; aging and temporality; diaspora studies; mental health and psychosocial challenges among marginalized peoples. Methodologically Wong-Mersereau engages with a layered approach to critical discourse analysis, multimodal sensory ethnography, and digital storytelling. Over the pandemic, she worked with the Canadian Red Cross in long term care homes, COVID-testing clinics, homeless shelters, and on the housing crisis project.
ity of Alberta and has received training in patient-oriented research through the University of Calgary’s PACER (Patient and Community Engagement Research) Program. He is the Patient, Family, and Donor Partnerships & Education Manager with the Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program. In this role, Manuel builds relationships patient partners with investigators and strengthens capacity among CDTRP patient partners.
Anders Billström 
Gareth Wiltshire
K
Sherrie Logan 
born and raised in Edmonton, AB. With a degree in Music Performance (saxophone performance) and Education, Lindsey has taught for over a decade in the Edmonton Public School system. When she is not teaching, she is very involved in the music community, performing in the Edmonton Winds, conducting her own community ensemble (The Beer League Band) and on numerous musical boards across the province. For the past 5 years, Lindsey has had to take a break from teaching after having her amazing son, George. Maternity leave did not goes as expected as George was diagnosed with Dilated Cardiomyopathy at 5 months old and required 2 heart transplants before the age of 4. During this time, Lindsey has also began to dedicate her time building and expanding her charity: Big Gifts for Little Lives, where they raise money to fund Pediatric Heart Transplant research at the Stollery.
Dr. Caigan Du is a scientist at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He received a Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry in UK and postdoctoral training in Immunology in USA. He is interested in the pathogenesis of kidney ischemia-reperfusion injury and transplant rejection, and molecular control of urinary malignancies. He has been studying the impact of kidney donor-derived factors on renal allograft rejection, and the molecular pathways of kidney injury and regeneration in experimental models. He is also interested in developing medical solution including drugs made from natural compounds for all kinds of health problems, including immune disorders, organ preservation, kidney failure and urinary cancer. He is the PI of many grant supports from the Kidney Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Heather Badenoch is a non-directed living liver donor and communications strategist. As the president of Village PR, she provides strategic communications direction and training to not-for-profit clients in community and health. An active transplant volunteer, Heather helps transplant candidates find living donors by running their public appeals, small and large, pro-bono. She also mentors potential living donors on the path to living donation. Heather is a volunteer with the UHN Centre for Living Organ Donation and the Canadian Donation and Transplant Research Program. She and her spouse adopt rescue dogs and volunteer together with Community Veterinary Outreach, a group providing free veterinary care to the pets of people who are homeless.
Sean Dicks is a clinical psychologist who has 20 years’ experience supporting both families of organ donors and transplant recipients. While it is rare for him to have contact with a donor family and recipient linked to the same organ donation-transplantation event, his contact with families who have lived experience with organ donation on the one hand, and patients who have received transplants on the other hand has provided opportunities to explore how their journeys become linked when they attempt to make sense of and find meaning in their respective crises.
Terri Hansen-Gardiner is a Cree speaking Metis woman from Northern Saskatchewan as well as a 10 year Breast Cancer Survivor. Her tireless spirit and dedication to her community is undeniable. Terri is a cancer survivor who travels around the province to provide assistance, information, and support to Indigenous patients who are trying to access and navigate the cancer care system.
Dr. Golnaz Karoubi is Assistant Scientist at the Toronto General HospitalResearch Institute and principal investigator in the Latner Thoracic Research Labs. She currently holds an Assistant Professor appointment in the department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and a cross-appointment in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Karoubi received her PhD in Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto and joined the Lung Regenerative Medicine Program in the Department of Clinical Research in Berne University, Switzerland for a post-doctoral research fellowship. She stayed on as a Group Leader in 2008 to direct the basic and transitional science as related to Cancer Stem Cell and Lung Regenerative Medicine in the Department of Biomedical Research at the University of Berne until 2012. In early 2012, she joined the team of Dr. Tom Waddell at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute as a Senior Scientific Associate and was appointed to Assistant Scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (University Health Network) in November 2019 and to Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology in July 2020.
Dr. Haykal graduated from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine in2007 as class valedictorian and silver medalist, and subsequently completed her residency training in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of Toronto in 2016. During her residency, she completed a four-year Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and immunology with a focus on tracheal reconstruction. She obtained numerous grants and awards including a CIHR Vanier Scholarship. Dr. Haykal then pursued fellowship training in microsurgical reconstruction at the Albany Medical Centre in New York. Dr. Haykal joined the University Health Network and the Toronto General Hospital in 2018. Her clinical focus is on complex oncological reconstruction and microsurgical reconstruction of the breast, head and neck and extremity. She started a lymphedema program in 2019 where she offers microsurgical techniques for the treatment of lymphedema.
Dr. Ahmed is a Professor in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. The recipient of the 2022 Hypertension Canada Senior Investigator Award, she is a nephrologist and clinician-scientist with a focus on sex and gender differences in human cardiovascular/kidney physiology and clinical outcomes. Dr. Ahmed is the Vice Chair (Research) for the Department of Medicine, Lead of the Libin Institute Women’s Cardiovascular Health Research Initiative at the University of Calgary and Lead of the Alberta Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Capacity Development Platform. Dr. Ahmed is an Advisory Board member for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Gender and Health, a member of the Canadian Medical Association Journal Governing Council and the President-Elect for the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences.
r. Christopher Nguan is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Urological Sciences, Surgical Head of Kidney Transplantation at Vancouver General Hospital and the Director of the Surgical Technologies Experimental Laboratory & Advanced Robotics (STELLAR) facility at Vancouver General Hospital.
r Caroline Lamarche is a clinician scientist and transplant nephrologist at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital. She is an assistant clinical professor at the Université de Montréal. After her nephrology training at the Université de Montréal (2015), she completed a Master degree on the use of adoptive immunotherapy to treat/prevent BK nephropathy in kidney transplant recipients. She then pursued a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Megan Levings at the University of British Columbia on the use of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) regulatory T cells (Tregs) to induce transplant tolerance. Her lab is working on the development of adoptive immunotherapy in nephrology and understanding Treg dysfunction.
Dr. Tandon is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Co-Director of the Cirrhosis Care Clinic, Transplant Hepatologist and lead of the Cirrhosis Care Alberta quality improvement program. She obtained her training at the University of Alberta, the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona and Yale University. Her clinical practice and research are focused on cirrhosis with research interests including cirrhosis related complications, malnutrition, frailty, exercise therapy, palliative care, integrative health approaches such as meditation and knowledge translation. It is her career goal to provide wholistic, interdisciplinary, evidence based, patient-centered care through education, empowerment, engagement and team-work.
Emily is a PhD student at the University of Alberta, where she completed her Master of Science (MSc) degree in medicine. With a passion for patient-oriented research and a commitment to improving health outcomes, Emily’s doctoral project focuses on EMPOWER, a 12-week online mind-body wellness program designed for adults living with chronic health conditions.
Dr Basil S. Nasir, M.B.B.Ch
Dr. Victor Ferreira is an Assistant Scientist in the Ajmera Transplant Centre at the University Health Network (UHN) and the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI). He is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology (LMP). He completed his PhD in Medical Sciences – Infection and Immunity Specialization at McMaster University in 2014 and post-doctoral training at UHN. His research program is focused on three pillars: I) using systems vaccinology to reveal insights into vaccine responses in immunocompromised individuals like transplant recipients; II) characterizing the impact of chronic viral infection on host immune responses; and III) developing novel methods for eliminating latent viruses in human organs. His work has been cited >2,500 times and is published in journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Immunology, the Lancet Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, the American Journal of Transplantation and Journal of Infectious Diseases.