Book Contributors

Dr. Madelyn P. Law is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University. She is an implementation and improvement scientist with the expressed vision of ensuring that research is used to inform and create local contextualized change to enhance the health of the population. Dr. Law’s research centers on organizational culture and change with a focus on how values drive behaviors. She is most interested in understanding how to ease the point of collision between research and practice by motivating new behaviors and system improvements through individual, structural, and organizational means. Dr. Law has received numerous grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Public Health Ontario, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Physicians’ Services Incorporated Foundation for her work in quality improvement in health services. She is also the founder and director of the Interprofessional Education for Quality Improvement Program connecting students to experiential education opportunities in the local health sector.

Caitlin Muhl is a PhD Candidate in Health Quality at Queen’s University. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Medical Sciences and a Master of Public Health from Brock University. Caitlin is interested in upstream interventions in health care to advance health, health quality, and health equity. Her doctoral research is focused on social prescribing.

Dr. Sinéad McElhone is the Director (Acting) of Organizational and Foundational Standards at Niagara Region Public Health. She leads a team of data, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), research and evaluation and communications experts. Dr. McElhone has an interest in Information Governance and how it underpins decision making and provides a linkage across academia and the health sector.

Dr. Robert W. Smith is a second-generation Canadian settler of English and Lithuanian ancestry grateful to live, work, and learn on the traditional territory of Lac Seul First Nation in what is now called Sioux Lookout, Ontario. He is an Assistant Professor (Status-Only) at Dalla Lana School of Public Health and public health practitioner working to collaboratively lead the creation of health systems with which everyone has an equitable opportunity for wellbeing. Rob is a social epidemiologist and applied health systems researcher by training, holding a Doctor of Philosophy in Population Health from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Karen A. Patte is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University. Drawing on her training in psychology and public health, her research applies a socioecological framework and systems sciences approaches, to advance understanding of how different contexts and exposures shape mental health trajectories over time, to inform more effective preventative practice, policy, and programs.

Dr. Asif Khowaja is an Assistant Professor at Brock University. His work focuses on co-designing economic models in collaboration with healthcare decision-makers and conducting cost-effectiveness and microsimulation analyses to inform policy and practice in healthcare. He has led several projects, including the economic impact of quality improvement initiatives in acute care facilities and long-term care homes, the cost-effectiveness of community-based interventions for maternal and newborn health, the cost-efficacy of newborn screening, vaccine effectiveness, and patient-oriented research to measure societal costs.

Sherri Hannell is the Manager of Records and Information Management at Niagara Region. She has 15+ years of experience delivering data, knowledge, records, and information management programs and projects in the private and public sector.

LLana James develops and implements interventions to improve clinical outcomes, population health, and data management systems including the Research, Evaluation, Data, and Ethics Protocol for Black populations, Canadian Edition a.k.a REDE4BlackLives Protocol, with the tireless support of Dr. Ciann Wilson. She critically appraises current practices, and seeds new ethical futures; undoing the known, but often ignored issues and emergent harms of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications in medicine, healthcare, and public health that undermine human rights, and harm Black populations. LLana’s multi-pronged, transdisciplinary, collaborative research occurs at the intersections of AI, ML, data, law, and intervention science and grapples with the historical and ongoing effects of colonization on Black Indigenous life globally. As a Black woman of the diaspora born in Canada, of ancestry indigenous to Africa and the America’s, via the Caribbean, love and apocalyptic forces unleashed by transatlantic slavery. LLana is the Chair of the Ontario Black Bioethics Reference Group, leads the Personal Health Information, Justice and the Law Network, Chairs the Canadian Race Correction De-adoption Working Group, and is the Co-Chair of the Canada-US Coalition to End Race-correction in Healthcare. As a result of her ground-breaking work, LLana is the AI, Medicine and Data Justice Post-Doctoral Fellow at Queen’s University, her doctoral training, took place at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Robyn K. Rowe is a mother of four, a member of Matachewan First Nation, and a hereditary member of Teme Augama Anishnabai. She holds a PhD in rural and northern health from Laurentian University with her dissertation entitled The Fires we Keep: Honouring the land through Indigenous-led Resistance, Sovereignty, and Data. Robyn is an Executive Member of the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (http://www.gida-global.org) and was involved in the co-creation of the ‘CARE Principles of Indigenous Data Governance’ with Indigenous partners from around the world through the International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group as part of the Research Data Alliance (www.rd-alliance.org). Robyn is also the Indigenous Data Team Lead at Health Data Research Network Canada (www.HDRN.ca) and a Staff Scientist at ICES (www.ICES.on.ca). Robyn’s work intersects in the areas of Indigenous health and policy, Indigenous data governance and sovereignty, and social and environmental justice. Robyn’s continued research efforts focus on decolonizing health data environments through the assertion of inherent Indigenous rights and interests.

Dr. Elaina Orlando is the Research Manager at Niagara Health. She has expertise in health system research, engagement, and systematic quality improvement and has experience working in acute care, home care, and public health settings. She has led multidisciplinary frontline teams in acute care through major organizational changes and the application of systematic quality improvement to create more efficient, effective, and patient-centered care processes.

Jayne Morrish is the Knowledge Mobilization Officer at Brock University’s Office of Research Services, where she supports Brock’s Lifespan Development Research Institute. In her role, Jayne leads knowledge mobilization, partnership work, capacity building and community engagement initiatives – focusing on building support and connections around the research of Lifespan Institute members and their students. Jayne has completed a SSHRC funded Master’s Degree in Lifespan Development from Brock University, a Bachelors of Health from York University, the Knowledge Translation Professional Certificate from the University of Toronto, the Mobilize YU Certificate from York University, and the Leadership Niagara Certificate.

Kristin Mechelse is the Long-Term Care Program Manager at Upper Canada Lodge (Niagara Region) and holds a Bachelor of Recreation and Leisure Studies from Brock University as well as a Diploma in Recreation and Leisure Studies from Niagara College, and has worked in long-term care for 26 years. In her current role, Kristin is passionate about implementing new ways to improve residents’ quality of life and makes resource allocation decisions through evidence-based research and best practices in all dimensions of care relating to recreation programming. She is also the Health & Safety Management Co-Lead in her home, is a Certified Joint Health and Safety Committee Member through the Ministry of Labour (Long-Term Health Care Sector Specific) and supports the belief that by working together and sharing responsibility for health and safety, workers, supervisors and employers can reduce the number of injuries, illnesses and fatalities in our workplace.

Noah James is in the Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Medical Sciences program at Brock University. He plans to continue his education in a Master of Science program. Noah is interested in improving the healthcare system by using evidence and data. He is also interested in connecting health information across the continuum of care to enhance patient experience and continuity of care.

Lidia Mateus is a graduate student at Brock University. She works in the field of health sciences with an emphasis on virtual care and the use of quality improvement in clinical practice. Lidia’s work has been presented at a number of conferences including the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians Conference and the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research Conference.

Megan Magier obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Waterloo and her Master of Health Science from Brock University. She is currently working towards her Doctorate in Behavioural and Population level health at Brock University.

Dr. Kelly A. Pilato is a Research Associate in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University. Kelly’s research is focused on evidence-based policy development and implementation as a framework for enhancing health at a population level. Her work is applied in nature and contributes to scientific knowledge related to policies with real-world impacts that support the health and wellness of a given population within the context of their lives and social determinants of health. She has experience in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, scoping reviews, systematic, and rapid reviews.