Growing up in Spalding, Saskatchewan, Joy Johnson got a taste of her future career on a daily basis.
“My mother was a nurse, and she would come home from the hospital and tell me absolutely fascinating stories about the patients she was taking care of,” Johnson said. “And I was really captivated by the nature of the work, both the demands that it involved, but really the important ways that you could engage with people.”
Johnson, who is vice-president of research at Simon Fraser University, has a career that has taken her from the hospital to the laboratory, and through to various leadership positions at two of British Columbia’s leading post-secondary institutions. Born in 1960, she moved from Saskatchewan with her family, first to Ontario before settling in Vancouver, where she graduated from high school in 1977. Johnson knew exactly what she wanted to do – become a nurse – so she headed to the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) nursing program, graduating in 1981. But once she started working in the field, she realized the work was both rewarding and emotionally challenging. The job required both a kind heart and a steely resolve.
“It’s a bit of a cold, hard reality once you understand the nature of the work,” she said. “When you’re a nurse on a daily basis you are confronted with both tragedy and incredible hope and opportunity.”
Johnson spent close to five years in the profession, but she wanted to go further. With that in mind, she headed to the University of Alberta, completing her master’s degree in nursing in 1988, and then her PhD in 1993. Johnson said during this time she was fully exposed to the world of research, and she was hooked.
“I was really interested in the nature of knowledge and how we use evidence and knowledge in practice,” she said. “Because there are a lot of discussions about evidence and informed decision-making, so my dissertation really focused on how we use knowledge in practice.”
Johnson took a wide range of classes from philosophy to statistics, expanding her own knowledge base in the process.
But the West Coast was calling, and Johnson decided to return to Vancouver, accepting a tenure-track position with UBC’s School of Nursing in 1994. Johnson held a variety of positions with the school including associate professor and unit director for the Centre for Addictions Research of BC.
It was also during this time that Johnson found another calling, and from 2008 to 2014 she became the scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Gender and Health.
Once again Johnson’s interest in research was piqued, as the position put her on the front lines of the industry.
“It was really in that context that I started to see the power of science policy and understand what we can do in terms of developing infrastructure in terms of research,” she said. “It really lifted my gaze from my own individual research, to thinking about opportunities for others and how we need to grow science and excellence in research for this country.”
Johnson worked projects delving into scientific outcomes related to gender differences. Johnson said the work was fascinating, revealing how the results of scientific research differs between the sexes in a variety of settings from pre-clinical work to clinical trials. The research uncovered how men and women react differently to certain medical treatments, and in some cases noted flaws in the system that initially lumped them together for research purposes.
Johnson also discovered changing policy was a “hard road” but one she found equally rewarding, as transforming longstanding practices is never an easy task.
“It’s not just about women, it’s about men as well,” she said. “For example we know that there are a number of diseases and conditions that differentially affect men and women; we don’t know why. Why is it that women are reported to have more depression than men, but men commit suicide at higher rates than women? What’s going on there? Is it biological, is it social?”
Johnson said the work focused on unmasking gender norms and developing new policy, with the overall goal of shaping health outcomes for the future.
Jeannie Shoveller, a professor at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health and the director of epidemiology and population health and the drug treatment program at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, has known Johnson since 1993, and said she is an “incredible communicator” who is ideally suited to the world of scientific research.
“Joy has a natural curiosity about why things are what they are,” continued Shoveller. “And she has a genuine interest in trying to understand those situations and to find ways to make situations better where it’s possible. I would say she’s a born scientist.”
In 2014 Johnson decided on another challenge, switching schools and also switching fields, once again expanding her personal knowledge in the process. Now as the vice-president of research, she works across eight faculties at SFU, with an onus on transferring “research to society.”
Johnson is also one of the key players with the school’s SFU Innovates initiative, in which the post-secondary institution seeks to bridge business classrooms and the outside business world.
Through it all, she still finds herself going back to her initial career, the one her mother sparked in her at a young age. Refining basic but necessary skills like communication and understanding has given her a depth of knowledge she uses on a daily basis.
“When you work as a nurse you’re very focused on trying to produce outcomes,” she said. “And I think applying that frame of thinking has really been very advantageous for my career.”
