Emilie Theberge, MSc 

Vancouver, BC | @emiliettheberge

Clinical Research Coordinator
University of British Columbia
Leslie Diamond Women's Heart Health Clinic
Vancouver, BC | @emiliettheberge

CWHHA member since November 2022

Biography

Emilie is a researcher and aspiring clinician-scientist passionate about addressing sex and gender differences in how heart and mental health symptoms are diagnosed and managed. In 2012, she moved to the west coast from Toronto, and completed both her BSc. (2017) and MSc. (2022) at the University of British Columbia. Throughout her undergraduate degree, she was motivated to explore the question “why do people do the things they do?”. Her interest in cardiology grew from her fascination with how the body manifests stress differently, such as how psychological factors (ie. resilience) and genetic predispositions contribute to heart disease manifestation; why do some people develop heart disease or mental health disorders, and others don’t? How is heart health influenced by mental health? Why are there such pronounced sex and gender differences in cardiovascular diagnoses and management, but so many papers still don’t separate analyses by sex to see these differences? Questions like this have inspired her trajectory into clinical research, and learning computational skills to be able to analyze biobank-scale data to investigate population-scale “big data”. Her graduate thesis in Medical Genetics investigated sex differences in the intersectionality of genetic risk to depression and shared associations with heart disease in a large Canadian cohort of over 16,000 people, where she found differences in comorbidities and genetic risk. She currently holds research appointments in Cardiology and Medical Genetics at UBC and Vancouver General Hospital as she applies for medical school. Emilie is passionate about being involved with volunteer and research initiatives to raise awareness to women’s heart health, through her work at the Leslie Diamond Women’s Heart Health Clinic, advocacy work with Wear Red Canada, and hopefully future involvement in related research projects.