Women preparing for ovarian cancer surgery at Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) will soon benefit from an innovative new pilot project designed to improve recovery before they even enter the operating room.
With the help of a $43,738 grant from the Women’s Giving Circle, KHSC anesthesiologist Dr. Jordan Leitch is launching a pilot prehabilitation program (PreHabKHSC) focused on fitness, nutrition, and psychological well-being ahead of surgery.
While rehabilitation after surgery is common, “pre-hab” before surgery is a relatively new approach in Canadian health care. The idea is simple: helping patients build strength and healthy routines ahead of time can improve surgical outcomes and support faster recovery.
“Three weeks (of pre-hab) is not enough to totally change your health trajectory, but it is the right amount of time to form habits of consistent exercise, nutrition and psychological wellbeing,” explains Dr. Leitch. “That consistency can serve patients very well, both before and long after surgery.”
The PreHabKHSC grant will fund exercise equipment, protein supplements and the development of a mobile app to guide patients through the program. Dr. Leitch and her team also hope to use this pilot project to create a training pipeline for kinesiology students, preparing the next generation of prehabilitation coaches.
Financial backing from fundraising groups like Women’s Giving Circle is critical. Smaller research projects and pilot studies often struggle to secure grants, yet they play a vital role in shaping future medical treatments and breakthroughs.
“Research is important. Every single sentence in every textbook that doctors read is based on knowledge learned from research studies,” says Dr. Leitch. “Even if a single project only contributes one line, that matters.”
Rachel Koven, chair of the Women’s Giving Circle, says the group was drawn to the program’s innovation and potential.
“The Women’s Giving Circle has the collective power to support new researchers. Grants at this level are hard to come by, especially if you're an up-and-coming researcher. So we give these researchers a chance to start their careers,” says Rachel. “We're very fortunate that we have amazing health-care researchers in our own community. To me, it rivals what exists in the larger cities.”
The goal is to have a prehabilitation program that has shown proven results to improve patient outcomes by the end of 2027 that can easily be scaled and shared with other health organizations.
The Women’s Giving Circle is a University Hospitals Kingston Foundation donor group of more than 100 women who raise funds to support world-class research at KHSC and Providence Care. Membership is $42 per month (women 40 and over) or $21 per month (under 40). To join or to learn more about the Women’s Giving Circle, visit the UHKF website or call 613-549-5452.