Vicky Bungay, PhD, RN | School of Nursing

Professor and Associate Director, Strategic Initiatives

Canada Research Chair Tier II: Gender, Equity and Community Engagement

111 - 2176 Health Sciences Mall
Vancouver BC Canada V6T 1Z3

Dr. Bungay’s research focuses on addressing inequities that negatively affect people’s health and well-being including the devastating effects of stigma, discrimination, and violence. She explores how research partnerships can positively impact communities that are excluded in health and social policy; programming that affects their lives; and how community-based interventions support real world evidence.

Profile

Research

Research Interests

Dr. Bungay's work focuses on addressing inequities that negatively affect people’s health and well-being including the devastating effects of stigma, discrimination and violence. She is interested in how research partnerships can positively impact communities that are regularly excluded in health and social policy and programming that affect their lives and how community-based interventions support real world evidence. Her current research and partnerships are tackling such issues as research ethics in practice, equity oriented care, gender–based violence, and evidence-informed recommendations to promote and protect the health, safety and human rights of people engaged in the adult commercial sex industry.

Current Projects

STRENGTH DTES comprises two key projects:

Promoting access to care for women affected by intimate partner violence in the DTES
Partnerships for Trauma and Violence Informed Outreach: New Strategies to Service Delivery to Redress Violence Against Women

The overall aim is promoting access to care for women affected by violence. The Inner City Women’s Initiatives Society’s philosophy of women-led service delivery recognizes women as experts in their own lives. Their expertise, commitment, and passion to the women they serve is integral to the success of this project and the Capacity Research Unit is very excited to partner with and learn from them, as well as all the partners in the project. “STRENGTH DTES” is an innovative trauma and violence informed outreach intervention with the aim of promoting access to support services among highly isolated and vulnerable women experiencing violence in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It’s participatory action research (PAR) approach involves researchers, health and social service leaders/staff and women experiencing violence. The team will build on the capacity of current services to learn if and how integrating a trauma informed approach to outreach services facilitates women’s connections with health and social services and improves service coordination to address the populations’ needs. By testing trauma and violence informed approaches to engagement we can achieve our goal of learning how to work together to understand women's priorities and foster safe access to services and relationships with practitioners. Ultimately this partnership and research will offer an empirically driven model of trauma and violence informed outreach that includes an intervention that can be implemented and measured and can be further tested and refined at a national level. This project is innovative in its implementation and testing of a tailored intervention at a community level, leadership structure, and meaningful collaborations across professions and sectors.

Co-PIs: Vicky Bungay, Linda Dewar (Inner City Women’s Initiatives Society)
Funders: Vancouver Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

EQUIP Emergency

EQUIP is a five-year interdisciplinary research program funded by CIHR. Emergency Departments (EDs) in Canada often operate over-capacity and are under significant pressures. In this environment, particular groups of people experience inadequate and inequitable treatment in EDs, including Indigenous people, racialized newcomers, people with mental illnesses, those living in unstable housing or facing homelessness, experiencing interpersonal violence or using substances, and people involved in sex work. Stigma and discrimination in health care deters people from accessing care, interfering with effective care delivery, increasing reliance on EDs, and increasing human and financial costs. EDs have the potential to mitigate health inequities and facilitate appropriate care for people with complex health conditions. However, practices of discrimination in ED contribute to misdiagnoses, under-treatment and errors, deter timely care, and increase conflict. These dynamics increase costs and contribute to missed opportunities for enhancing the continuity of care, and to less than optimal outcomes. This project examines the feasibility, process, and impact of implementing an evidence-informed framework for interventions to improve the capacity of Emergency Departments to provide high quality care to people at greatest risk of experiencing health and health care inequities. Through collaboration among Indigenous leaders, ED staff and leaders, and researchers, the project aims to improve care, safety, access, and decrease adverse events for patients and staff.

Co-PIs: Colleen Varcoe, Annette Browne, Vicky Bungay, David Byres, and Elder Roberta Price
Funder: CIHR

Research Ethics Study

The primary purpose of this CIHR funded project is to describe the ethical and methodological challenges inherent in health research in the field of sex work and health. Many of those who work in Canada’s sex industry experience devastating health problems including violence, mental illness, sexually transmitted infections and HIV. Research aimed at addressing these pressing health issues has grown. Sex workers and researchers have identified many ethical challenges in carrying out this research: exclusion of sex worker sub-populations; problematic consent; bias in the methods and topics applied in research; voyeurism; and maintaining privacy and confidentiality. Given that research ethics are critical to the quality of research findings, these challenges raise important questions about real and potential limitations of some of this research to inform policy and health care programming aimed at addressing the grave health inequities experienced by sex workers. This study will ultimately further our understanding of the interrelationships between research methodology and research ethics, contribute to the growing empirical knowledge concerned with evidence-informed research ethics, and generate practical resources for researchers, sex workers and other stakeholders (e.g., ethic review boards) to enhance ethical research in practice and promote rigorous, high quality research necessary to shape health service delivery. For more information about the project please click here.

Social Network and Information Technologies in the Commercial Sex Industry (Street-to-Screen)

The aim of this 4-year mixed method study is to examine the diverse ways that information and communication technologies mediate how sex workers and their clients develop connections, exchange information, and negotiate the details of the sex for money exchange. This study addresses an important knowledge gap of the interrelationships between safety, security and ICT mediated social relationships. The project is funded through the SSHRC Insights Grant Program. For more information about the project please click here.

Completed Projects

SPACES: A Sex Industry Study (website)

This 3-year CIHR funded project aims to examine the physical and organizational contexts and managerial practices within specific off-street sex venues as influential for men and women sex workers' vulnerability for HIV infection. The study brings together a multi-disciplinary team from nursing, population and public health, medicine, sociology, and criminology. Advisory groups comprised of sex venue managers, sex workers, and sex buyers inform all stages of the project. This study brings a unique contribution to addressing health inequities among Canada's sex workers by including both men and women who sell sex as well as those involved in the operations of the industry. Click here for a link to the final report.

Curriculum Development for Nursing Leadership and Management

This project is funded through the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund and is directed at revising current MSN curriculum in nursing leadership and management within an online delivery format. Guided by leadership pedagogical perspectives, this project will result in a revised N512 Leadership in Nursing Course to be offered in January 2013 in the UBC School of Nursing MSN program.

Public Health Nurse Manager Study

The Public Health Nurse Manager Study is a one-year study of the experiences of nurse managers in implementing certified practice for sexually transmitted infections. The study includes collaborations with several health authorities in British Columbia and will provide the foundation for future work designed to investigate the outcomes of certified practice for public health nursing service delivery and patient care.

Knowledge Synthesis in Public Health Nursing Sexual Health Practice

The knowledge synthesis project is aimed at undertaking a systematic review of the nursing and related literature regarding the scope of nursing practice in the area of sexually transmitted infection and HIV prevention and control. This CIHR funded project is a collaborative effort between the School of Nursing and nursing practitioners and education leaders, a medical geographer and epidemiologist at the BC Centre for Disease Control. Our goal is to contribute meaningfully to the educational and legislative programming within Reproductive Health Certified Practice in British Columbia.

The ORCHID Project

Building upon earlier work concerned with STI and HIV prevention initiatives within the indoor commercial sex industry, our aim in this project is to exploring the interrelationships between work, environment, and health for migrant sex workers. The project partners from BC Centre for Disease Control, the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Simon Fraser University aim to expand our understanding of the issues unique to immigrant women's health to better inform policies and practices to promote women's health.

The STI/HIV Public Health Nursing Project

In this project the aim is to mapping the scope, location and delivery of public health nursing services in STI and HIV in British Columbia. In partnership with practitioners, medical geographers and epidemiologists at BCCDC and throughout the provincial health authorities, we have undertaken the first in depth review of the nature of nursing practice in STI prevention and control. Our aim is to also overlay these results with the distribution of STI and HIV testing and case data to be able to offer important information regarding the interrelationships between nursing resources and sexual health. Data collection is complete and analysis is currently underway.

Publications

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Selected Publications

Bungay, V. & Casey, L. (In Press). Chapter 10. Ethical issues in providing care to women engaged in sex work. In Ethical Issues in Women’s Health Care: Practice and Policy, L d’Agincourt-Canning and C. Ells (Eds). Oxford University Press: New York, NY.

Slemon, A., Bungay, V., Jenkins, E., & Brown, H. (In Press). Power and resistance: Nursing students' experiences in mental health practicums. Advances in Nursing Science.

Jiao, Z. & Bungay, V. (2018). Intersections of stigma, mental health and sex work: How Canadian men engaged in sex work navigate and resist stigma to protect their mental health. Journal of Sex Research, Published ahead of print. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2018.1459446

Handlovsky, I., Bungay, V., Oliffe, J., & Johnson, J. (2018). Developing resilience: Gay men’s response to systemic discrimination. American Journal of Men’s Health, 1-13. doi: 10.1177/1557988318768607

Bungay, V. & Guta, A. (2018) Strategies and challenges in preventing workplace violence against Canadian indoor sex workers. American Journal of Public Health, 108(3): 393-398. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2017.304241.

Varcoe, C., Browne, A., Ford-Gilboe, M., Dion Stout, M., McKenzie, H., Price, R., Bungay, V., Smye, V., Inyallie, J., Day, L., Khan, K., Heino, A., & Merritt-Gray, M. (2017). Reclaiming Our Spirits: Development, pilot results and study protocol to test the feasibility and efficacy of a health promotion intervention for Indigenous women who have experienced intimate partner violence. Research in Nursing and Health, 40(3), 237-254. doi: 10.1002/nur.21795

Mitchell, S.E., Bungay, V., Day, C., & Mooney-Somers, J. (2016). Has the experience of Hepatitis C diagnosis improved over the last decade? An analysis of Canadian women’s experiences. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 48(1), 21-28.

Jenkins, E., Kothari, A., Bungay, V., Johnson, J.L. & Oliffe, J.L. (2016) Strengthening population health interventions: Developing the collaboraKTion framework for community-based knowledge translation. Health Research Policy and Systems, 14(1), 65. DOI:10.1186/s12961-016-0138-8.

Bungay, V., Handlovsky, I., Phillips, C., & Prescott, C. (2016). A scoping review of the literature on nursing practice in sexually transmitted infection care. Journal of Clinical Nursing. Published ahead of print. DOI: 10.1111/jocn.13561.

Singien, K., Price, M, Bungay, V., & Wong, S. (2016) A retrospective cohort study using the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network data to examine depression in patients with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. CMAJ, DOI: 10.9778/cmajo.20160052.

Manning, E. & Bungay, V. (2016). ‘Business before pleasure’: The golden rule of sex work, payment schedules, and gendered experiences of violence. Published ahead of print. Culture, Health & Sexuality. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2016.1219767

Black, A., Bungay, V., Mackay, M., Balneaves, L., & Garossino, C. (2016). Understanding mentorship in a research training program for point-of-care clinicians. Journal of Nursing Administration, 46(9), 444-448. DOI: 10.1097/NNA.0000000000000373.

Hayward, D., Bungay, V., Wolff, A., & MacDonald, V. (2016) A qualitative study of experienced nurses’ voluntary turnover: Learning from their perspectives. Journal of Clinical Nursing. 25(9-10), 1336-145. DOI: 10.1111/jocn.13210

Bowen, R. & Bungay, V. (2016). Taint: An examination of the lived experiences of stigma and its’ lingering effects for sex industry experts. Culture, Health and Sexuality. 18(2), 184-197. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2015.1072875

Bungay, V., Oliffe, J., & Atchison, C. (2016). Addressing underrepresentation in sex work research: Reflections on designing a purposeful sampling strategy. Qualitative Health Research, 26(7), 966-978. doi: 10.1177/1049732315613042.

Jenkins, E., Johnson, J., Bungay, V., Kothari, A., & Saewyc, E. (2015). Divided and disconnected – an examination of youth’s experiences with emotional distress within the context of their everyday lives. Health & Place. 35, 105-112. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2015.08.006

Bungay, V., Masaro, C. & Gilbert, M. (2014). Examining the scope of public health nursing practice in sexually transmitted infection prevention and management: what do nurses do? Journal of Clinical Nursing. 23(21-22), 3274-3785. DOI:10.1111/jocn.12578.

Bungay, V, & Stevenson, J. (2014). Nurse leaders’ experiences of implementing regulatory changes in sexual health nursing practice in British Columbia Canada. Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice, 14(2), 69-78. DOI: 10.1177/1527154413510564.

Kolar, K., Atchison, C. & Bungay, V. (2014). Sexual safety practices of massage parlor-based sex workers and their clients. AIDS Care, 26(9), 1110-1104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540121.2014.894611

Bungay, V., Kolar, K., Thindal, S., Remple, V., Johnston, C., & Ogilvie, G. (2013). Community-based HIV and STI prevention with women working in indoor sex markets. Health Promotion Practice, 14(2), 247-255. DOI: 10.1177/1524839912447189

Bungay, V. Health care among street-involved women: The justification and perpetuation of inequity. Qualitative Health Research. 23(3), 1016-1026. DOI: 10.1177/1049732313493352

Guta, A. & Bungay, V. (2013). Lessons learned from the Ottawa 20: Reclaiming the ethics review process to advance academic freedom. Aporia. The Nursing Journal, 5(3), 34-38.

Handlovsky, I., Bungay, V., Johnson, J.L., & Phillips, J.C. (2013). The process of safer crack use among women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Qualitative Health Research, 23(4), 450-462. DOI: 10.1177/1049732312469465

Oliffe, J.L., Chabot, C., Knight, R., Davis, W., Bungay, V., & Shoveller, J. (2013). Women on men's sexual health and sexually transmitted infection testing: A gender relations analysis. Sociology of Health and Illness, 35(1), 1-16. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2012.01470.x

Persaud, S., Tzemis, D., Kuo, M., Bungay, V., & Buxton, J. (2013). Controlling chaos: the perceptions of crack cocaine users in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Addiction (2013), 1-9. Published ahead of print at DOI: 10.1155/2013/851840.

Handlovsky, I., Kolar, K., & Bungay, V. (2012). Condom use as situated in a risk context: Women's experiences in the massage parlour industry in Vancouver, Canada. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 14(9), 1007-1020. DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2012.712720

Bungay, V., Halpin, M., Halpin, P.F., Johnston, C., & Patrick, D.M. (2012). Violence in the massage parlour industry: Experiences of Canadian-born and immigrant women. Health Care for Women International, 33(3), 262-284. DOI: 10.1080/07399332.2011

Malchy, L.A., Bungay, V., Johnson, L.L., & Buxton, J. (2011). Do crack smoking practices change with the introduction of safer crack kits? Canadian Journal of Public Health, 102(3), 188-192. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&hid=110&sid=163...

Bungay, V., Atchison, C., Halpin, M., & Johnston, C. (2011). Strucutre and agency: Reflections from an exploratory study of Vancouver indoor sex workers. Culture Health and Sexuality, 13(1), 15-29. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2010.517324

Bungay, V., Johnson, J., Varcoe, C., & Boyd, S. (2010). Women's health and use of crack cocaine in context: Structural and 'everyday' violence. International Journal of Drug Policy, 21(4), 321-329. DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2009.12.008

Bungay, V., Johnson, J., Boyd, S., Buxton, J., Malchy, L., & Loudfoot, J. (2009). Women’s Stories/Women’s Lives.Creating safer crack kits. Women’s Health and Urban Living, 5(1), 28-43.

Malchy, S., Bungay, V., & Johnson, J. (2008). A snapshot of practices and perceptions among crack users in Vancouver, British Columbia. International Journal of Drug Policy, 19(4), 339-341. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.06.005

Bungay, V. (2008). Health experiences of women who are street-involved and use crack cocaine: Inequity, oppression, and relations of power in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia.

Bungay, V., Malchy, L., Buxton, J., Johnson, J., MacPherson, D., & Rosenfeld, D. (2006). Life with jib: a snapshot of street youth's use of crystal methamphetamine. Addiction Research & Theory, 14(3), 235-251.

Bungay, V. & Keddy, B. (1996). Experiential analysis as a feminist methodology for health professionals. Qualitative Health Research, 6, 442-452.

Teaching

Supervisor eligibility:

MHLP
MN
MSN – thesis
MSN – non-thesis
PhD

Graduate Supervision