Join CANet at our upcoming Expert Knowledge Exchange titled “Building for the Future”; an event dedicated to students, allied health professionals, learners and patient partners.
Our goal is to offer learning opportunities outside of traditional academic-based education, through workshops and interactive lectures that will help build vital knowledge and skills for career success.
Please note: travel and accommodation costs will be covered if you submit a poster!
Social media is full of noise, especially in a pandemic. The first step towards engaging with an audience must always be capturing their attention. Our entire social media strategy is audience-first. We listen, then we talk, and then we listen again.Join Amanda Higginson from the Ottawa Public Health social media team to discuss strategic health communication to break through the noise and reach audiences.
Amanda Higginson
Amanda is a Project Officer with Ottawa Public Health. Joining the social media team in 2020, she specializes in public health communication with a focus on youth and young adult content.
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Amanda graduated from Carleton University in Health Sciences with a concentration in Global Health.
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It has been argued that the current post-graduate system is overly geared to preparing future individuals toward faculty appointments with a lack of emphasis on transferable skills for a life outside of academia. With a dearth in open faculty positions, changes will be needed to better prepare students for industry careers. Until faculty programs are overhauled, it is incumbent upon individuals to expose themselves to new networks and rationalize how to best leverage their skills for a career outside of academia. This panel will hear from individuals who exited the post-graduate system at various points of their careers and navigated the bigger world outside of academia.
Joel Sherwood
Joel Sherwood has 15 years of sales experience in the med-tech industry, holding a variety of positions with companies like Johnson & Johnson and ZOLL Medical. Currently, Joel is serves as a senior account executive, field sales trainer, and member of the sales advisory committee for ZOLL Medical. In this field of work, Joel helps hospitals, EMS and other healthcare facilities treat and manage a wide variety cardiac patient across the continuum.
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He also works in collaboration with key opinion leaders improve sudden cardiac arrest survival across Canada. Joel received his undergrade from the University of Guelph with Honors in Kinesiology. He is a father of young 3 girls and promotes cardiac health in his community.
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Patrick Logan
Patrick Logan is the million-copy best-selling author of more than fifty thriller, horror, and psychological suspense novels, all of which he dictates. He is also the creator of two top-ranking Spotify podcasts, Camp Fear and P.T. Logan’s Five Minutes of Terror.
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He received his Masters and PhD in Pathology from McGill University, where he devoted many years to science before making the nonlinear switch to writing. He lives in Montreal with his wife Ashley and his three daughters, who are following in his footsteps with a fondness for chills and thrills.
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Jonathan Yeh
Jonathan Yeh is a co-founder and general partner of Saisei Ventures, a leading healthcare focused venture capital firm with operations in the United States and Japan. Jonathan is an early-stage investment professional in the field of regenerative medicine and advanced therapies, with particular expertise in cell-based therapies and gene-modified cells. Jonathan’s diverse background spans early-stage venture company creation and investment, strategic business partnering, and fund management. Prior to co-founding Saisei, Jonathan served as Vice President, Investments at Healios K.K., a Tokyo-based leading biotech company advancing a diverse pipeline of cell therapies.
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Jonathan also held various roles at the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) where he oversaw the cell and gene therapy focused venture portfolio, helping to catalyze the launch of several early ventures including, Notch Therapeutics, AVROBIO, and ExCellThera. Jonathan is currently co-founder and board director at Ryne Biotechnology, an iPSC-focused neurodegeneration company in San Diego and serves on the Investment Committee of CCRM, the Business Models and Finance Committee of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy, and as an Associate Mentor at Creative Destruction Lab. Jonathan was a CIHR Post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer at Université de Montréal and received his MBA from the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University. Jonathan received his PhD from the Department of Medicine, Division of Experimental Medicine at McGill University.
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Ian Swanson
Ian brings over 14 years of sales, operations, and business development experience in the medical device industry. After finishing his time on the lab bench, Ian joined the leading medical device market research company, Decision Resources Group, where he led global market research projects for cardiac medical device makers.
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He next joined Synaptive Medical, a neurosurgical medical device maker, as it exited stealth mode to lead business development efforts. Ian now leads the international sales and operations for Synaptive as they seek to bring enhanced safety and outcomes to the global neurosurgical community.
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Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are used to quantify the impact of interventions from the patients’ perspective. This course is designed to familiarize participants with the range and scope of what PROMs are used for, how they are developed and evaluated, what they measure, and how PROM data can be used in health research, clinical trials, or clinical care applications. We will discuss the properties of a good PROM. Participants will also be briefly introduced to the steps researchers generally go through in order to develop and test a new PRO measure, including item generation, qualitative cognitive testing, and quantitative psychometric evaluation.
Dr. Katie Dainty
Dr. Katie Dainty is a qualitative social scientist and Research Chair in Patient-Centered Outcomes at North York General Hospital. In addition to her appointment at NYGH, she is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto.
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Her research involves studying issues related to patient and family experience, implementation science, patient-centered outcome measures, and quality improvement in community health care environments. Her core program of research focuses on using qualitative methods to unpack long-held assumptions about bystander experience and survivorship following sudden cardiac arrest.
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Theresa Aves
Theresa Aves is currently a PhD student in Health Services Research at the University of Toronto and the research manager of the CanROC EpiDOSE trial- the first multicentre randomized controlled trial to definitively test the potential benefit of low dose epinephrine against the current standard dose in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest resuscitation.
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She have been involved in cardiology research at St. Michael’s Hospital for nearly 15 years with particular interests in patient health related quality of life and clinical trial development, implementation, and analysis.
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Biostatistics is a broad and rich field which is essential for clinical research. Despite its breadth there are core underlying concepts common across the spectrum of application. This talk will introduce key ideas in biostatistical analysis using the clinical trial as an example application. The clinical trial was chosen since the concepts are easier to visualize but the ideas presented generalize to other designs as well.
Kevin Thorpe
Kevin Thorpe is a statistician, educated at the University of Waterloo, with thirty years experience and 200 publications related to trials and studies spanning a wide range clinical fields including: cerebrovascular disease, nephrology, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, thrombosis, neonatology and oncology.
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His research interests include the design, conduct, data management and analysis of clinical trials, statistical education and statistical computing. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and head of biostatistics at the Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC) within the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital.
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This session will provide a foundational understanding of the basic concepts of EDI, and how systems of oppression operate in academia. We will discuss the challenges and barriers faculty, students, trainees and staff from underrepresented groups face in the research ecosystem which has led to the lack of diversity we see in these environments. Participants will be provided with principles and best practices of equity and inclusion, and how these can be embedded within the research environment.
Dr. Nicole Kaniki
Dr. Kaniki is the Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research and Innovation at the University of Toronto. In her role, she examines, advocates and advances EDI in all aspects of U of T research, innovation and entrepreneurship.
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Dr. Kaniki is the former Special Advisor on Anti-racism to the President of Western University and has over seven years of experience in research administration and EDI roles in academia. Dr. Kaniki has a passion for social justice and uses an anti-racism and decolonization framework in her EDI work.
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We are hearing more about mindfulness in response to stress and uncertainty. However, in the past few years, what have we learned about trauma, resiliency, growth and connection when so many things have pulled us apart? Is mindfulness enough in trauma-organized systems and organizations? Now, more than ever, we need to let compassion-led practices help us soar and give us direction.
Join us in an ‘armchair’ conversation exploring compassion-led practices in patient-oriented research. More specifically, we will share how trauma and resiliency-informed research practices can not only reduce and prevent harm but also activate resiliency and promote wellness.
Through sharing stories and practice evidence, combined with your insights, we aspire to help you:
Beverley Pomeroy
Beverley is a Queer Researcher, an Award-Winning Patient Public Engagement Specialist, and an uninvited settler-person on the shared, traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Snuneymuxw (snuh-nay-moe) territory also known as Gabriola Island, British Columbia.
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Bev has a particular interest in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI+) and has co-developed a Trauma & Resiliency Informed Practice program for Research and Evaluation; a strength-based approach to Patient-Oriented Research. Bev’s unique combination of education, professional experience and lived experience has exposed them to progressively senior leadership opportunities in a variety of health care and research environments; from community laboratory services to patient safety, and quality improvement. Bev landed in patient- oriented research after her daughter, Sophia, passed away in 2017 from a rare, complex, chronic disease at the age of 16. They sit on the board of BC Patient Safety Quality Council Oversight & Advisory, Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research Evidence Alliance, and Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research.
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Marika Sandrelli
For over 40 years, Marika worked in outreach, counselling, education, and community development with people experiencing social exclusion from poverty, homelessness, mental health, and substance use issues in several countries in Africa and Central America and in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
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For the last 16 years, Marika works in the role of Knowledge Exchange Leader for Mental Health & Substance Use Services in Fraser Health where she leads that region’s Trauma & Resiliency Informed Practice initiative. A Governor General of Canada recipient, Marika was awarded a British Columbia Health Care Hero Award for your work in translating evidence into practice. Also, she teaches at Simon Fraser University (SFU) where she graduated with a Masters in Education in contemplative inquiry.
With a strong commitment to humane education practices, Marika is a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher and Canine Assisted Integration Specialist. She lives as an invited white settler on the unceded shared traditional territories of Kwantlin and Katzie First Nations also know by its colonial name of Mission, BC with her partner and two dogs where all are dedicated to expanding ethical animal assisted supports for learning, social inclusion, comfort, and healing.
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We will begin with an overview of Indigenous people in Canada.
We will also briefly discuss ethical engagement with Indigenous people and key concepts critical to Indigenous health research. This will include, at a high level, Indigenous perspectives in trauma and resiliency in research, the patient voice, sex and gender in research, data and its governance, and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in research.
This paper is specifically designed to dovetail several others at the EKE, hopefully facilitating linkages in these research topics and Indigenous cardiology research and practice.
Dr. Malcolm King
Dr. Malcolm King, a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, is co-lead of Pewaseskwan (the Indigenous Wellness Research Group) and faculty in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) where he serves as the Scientific Director of SCPOR, the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research.
Dr. King’s research is aimed at improving wellness and achieving health equity for First Nations, Métis and Inuit through strengths-based approaches that respect self-determination and privilege Indigenous ways of knowing.
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He was originally trained as a chemist and then as a biomedical researcher. Over a long career in pulmonary research, Malcolm developed new approaches to treat mucus clearance dysfunction in chronic lung disease, and continues to work on addressing issues in airborne disease transmission. After appointments at McGill University, the University of Alberta and Simon Fraser University, he joined USask in 2017. He also continues to teach and research in Indigenous health, with a particular focus on wellness and engagement.
From 2009 to 2016, Dr. King led the CIHR Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health as its Scientific Director, spearheading the development of a national research agenda for Indigenous Peoples’ health and wellness. Dr. King was honoured with a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 1999, and in 2016, he was named a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In November 2021, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
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Dr. Alexandra King
Dr. Alexandra King is a member of Nipissing First Nation (Ontario). She is an Internal Medicine Specialist with a focus on HIV, hepatitis C (HCV) and other conditions.
Alexandra is the Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and Wellness at the University of Saskatchewan and co-leads Pewaseskwan (the Indigenous Wellness Research Group). She works with Indigenous communities and relevant stakeholders to understand the health and wellness needs of First Nations and Métis peoples and the structural changes needed for improved Indigenous health outcomes.
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Alexandra brings leadership skills in culturally safe and responsive research and care, reconciliation, etuaptmumk (Two-eyed Seeing), which brings together Indigenous and Western worldviews or forms of knowledge, and Ethical Space—which needs to be created when peoples with disparate worldviews engage with each other. She is a leader in developing Indigenous research methodology and was instrumental in the creation of the Indigenous Community Research Partnerships Training Resource through Queen’s University.
She serves on many initiatives including The Scientific Advisory Committee of ICES (formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences), the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C (CanHepC), and the Indigenous Peoples’ Engagement and Research Council (IPERC), which provides guidance to health research projects including the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet) and the Canadian Heart Function (CHF) Alliance, both of which Pewaskeswan is involved with. Another project she is involved with is research into spinal-bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), also known as Kennedy’s Disease, which impacts Indigenous people at much higher-than-average rates.
Alexandra supervises graduate students at Simon Fraser University and the University of Saskatchewan, focusing on wellness intervention research with Indigenous people in the areas of land-based healing, health determinants, mental health and addiction, blood-born and sexually transmitted infections and justice health (prisoner health).
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In June 2006, CIHR began asking funding applicants to include sex and gender considerations into their research. We are now more than a decade past, and most information that clinicians use to diagnose, treat, and prevent disease in women is still based upon male cell lines, male model organisms and men. Despite gains over the last two decades, there remains pressing need for meaningful inclusion of sex, gender, and women’s health data in research and education. Recently, there has been emerging recognition that inclusion of race and ethnic diversity informs diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease states. This workshop aims to define sex and gender and diversity in the context of health research and clinical care, and work through both theoretical and practical considerations on meaningful inclusion of sex and gender and diversity through all levels of the research process and application to clinical care.
Dr. Lauren Drogos
Dr. Lauren Drogos is the Program Director for the Libin Cardiovascular Institute at the University of Calgary. She received a B.S in Psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology – Division of Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Illinois Chicago.
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Her research across the past decade has been centered on the effects of sex steroid hormones, women’s health factors, and autonomic nervous system function on brain health and quality of life. Dr. Drogos has also worked in research administration in the areas of mental health, cardiovascular health, and women’s health since 2019.
In her (limited) free time, Lauren is kept on her toes by identical twin girls and two elderly cats at home. She also enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy books, crocheting, and attempting to garden. Lauren’s pronouns are She/Her/Hers.
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Dr. Varinder Kaur Randhawa
Dr. Varinder Kaur Randhawa is currently undertaking critical care medicine, after having completed MD PhD, internal medicine, heart failure transplant cardiology and post-doctoral fellowships at University of Toronto, Western University and Cleveland Clinic. She has published on diverse topics including resuscitation sciences, advanced therapies and mechanical circulatory support outcomes increasingly with a sex, gender and diversity lens.
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She has over 100 publications and invited talks to national and international conferences, and is a recipient of a CIHR planning and dissemination grant on gender diversity, along with CIHR Doctoral, C-SPIN and Kostuk other research awards. She is a CCS Guidelines and EDI committee member, CJC trainee section co-editor, ISHLT Cardiogenic Shock Task Force section co-chair, and CWHHA, CHFS, CCTN and CANCARE member.
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Patient engagement is a critical component of patient care. Engaging patients in research allows for the integration of lived patient experience and expertise, whilst giving voice to those who have historically been left out of research. Integrating patient knowledge into studies has been shown to improve clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction, and overall quality of life.
CANet has been at the forefront of a recent push towards meaningful patient engagement in research. Although improving, it is important that we reflect on the current pitfalls in patient engagement and grow from these areas of limitation.
Key among these are the inherent biases we bring as researchers and clinicians. In this talk we will discuss how bias can impede optimal patient engagement in both research and the doctor’s office.
Our biases shape how we see the world and the patients we interact with. It is necessary to meaningfully recognize these biases in order to move towards a future of optimal patient engagement in all areas of practice.
Danaka Porter
Danaka obtained her Master of Engineering from MIT in systems and supply chain. She is a partner at iota consulting, a management consulting firm, where she consults in Supply Chain, Project Management, and Data Analytics in heavy manufacturing and technology.
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Danaka is also a sessional lecturer at the Dhillon School of Business, where she teaches Supply Chain and Project Management, and is currently writing a new supply chain textbook which will be available in the fall of 2022 through Stukent. Her algorithm writing took her into the medical side where Danaka is a cofounder and the current COO of VitaNova Tech, a fertility company in the US. She wrote algorithms to better match surrogates and egg donors with intended parents. Additionally she is currently completing her PhD in Cardiology at the Cumming School of Medicine where she is using machine learning to help find predictive markers of SCD (sudden cardiac death) by rewriting the current algorithms used in cardiac software programs.
Danaka sits on the Training and Education committee for the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada, where she educates other PhD’s, trainees, Doctors, and health care workers in implementing and using technology in cardiac care. She also sits on the board of motionball, a national fundraising committee dedicated to raising money for Special Olympics. She is also an animal foster parent for her local Humane Society, where she looks after a variety of animals.
Danaka routinely mentors high school and university students, helping them to find their passions, she is also an Educational Counselor with MIT where she works with admissions to find the best applicants that align with MIT’s mission. She is a certified coach and helps those she works with to achieve their goals and dreams.
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Tigana Runte
Tigana Runte is an MSc candidate (UBC)in the area of biostatistics, having completed her BSc in Mathematics (ULeth) in 2021. In addition to working as a biostatistician at CANet, Tigana also sits on the teaching and education committee (TEC), where she provides insight on lived patient experience and statistical methods.
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She has been engaged with CANet since 2017 as an HQP and patient partner beginning as a summer student with the CASMER study (Calgary) and continuing on as a research assistant and team lead with the Patient Journey Study. She is now completing a co-op placement at CANet (London) and is excited to do deep dives into the data generated in multiple CANet research studies. Tigana’s main interest lies in the intersection of biostatistics and EDI work. As a biostatistician and a patient partner Tigana advocates for the inclusion of historically marginalized groups in research.
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