About

I am currently consulting with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS to lead an evaluation of an opioid use disorder (OUD) intervention strategy designed by the BOOST Collaborative (The Best-practices in Oral Opioid agoniSt Therapy Provincial Collaborative) to retain clients in treatment, based on the  HIV cascade of care. This is a quality improvement (QI) initiative that requires taking a systems-level view and meaningfully including the client voice to address extremely complex issues.

As a  Senior Research Scientist in the Complexity Science Lab (CSL) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), I was a Co-Investigator on a several research grants, including a Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) multi-year operating grant. In this capacity, my research used real-time modeling, surveillance and knowledge translation frameworks to inform public health policy and emergency preparedness plans.

My PhD, from the interdisciplinary Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC, used organizational complexity theories to understand the informal pathways on which research knowledge is transmitted in a public health agency to develop frameworks for improved evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM).

For twelve years, I worked at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) in roles with progressively senior responsibility, most recently as the Associate Director of the Division of Mathematical Modeling. This group’s expertise was in the development of novel quantitative tools to understand the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases on social networks. The outcomes were used to identify optimal intervention strategies in support of public health policy. This Division was designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the first Collaborating Centre in Complexity Science for Health Systems (CS4HS), and only the third WHO Collaborating Centre ever designated in British Columbia. I proudly served a concurrent 4-year-term as this Centre’s Co-Director where I was responsible for setting the strategic direction and developing international collaborations in support of the work plan.

While somewhat unique among academic researchers, I have an MBA, which focused on health care management and organizational behaviour. I concluded this degree with a prestigious graduate internship at World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva. During this time, I contributed to the emerging area of Health Systems Research. This was followed by a year in Lima, Peru.

I am passionate about public health research and the power of using evidence to support policy. My research interests generally relate to topics at the intersection of complex systems, social networks, organizational complexity, knowledge translation, social determinants, transmission dynamics, health systems and global health.