Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Dr. Roz Lasker
Clinical Professor of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health

Roz Diane Lasker, MD, is known internationally for her work on interdisciplinary collaboration and public participation in community problem solving, planning, and policy development. During her 13-year tenure as director of the Division of Public Health and the Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health at The New York Academy of Medicine, she worked with hundreds of people and organizations around the country to study how collaboration strengthens the ability of a group to identify, understand, and solve problems and to develop evidence-based tools that practitioners, evaluators, and funders can use to assess and strengthen collaborative processes. Her research and publications have focused on medicine and public health collaboration, partnership synergy, the public’s role in emergency preparedness, and the voice and influence of historically excluded groups in community participation processes. Prior to joining the Academy, Dr. Lasker served as deputy assistant secretary for Health (Policy Development) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and principal policy analyst for the federal Physician Payment Review Commission.

Organizational Effectiveness: Attributes for Success

Sonya Corkum
Vice President of Knowledge Exchange and Communications

Sonya comes to the Agency from the World Health Organization, where she has served as a technical advisor for the past four years, creating networks to influence the use of research evidence in low and middle income countries. Sonya has over twenty years experience creating new programs and strategies that promote the use of research-based information to enhance health decisionmaking. She has held leadership positions in public health, hospital, non-profit and government environments and was the inaugural Vice President for Knowledge Translation and Partnerships with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Sonya will develop and implement an agency-wide knowledge exchange and communications strategy. She will support the Agency’s role as a knowledge broker, by working with partners across jurisdictions to improve access to the best available evidence in a relevant and timely manner. Sonya will create effective communications strategies that will help translate research results into on-the-ground tools, advice and support for front-line health care professionals.

Organizational Effectiveness: Attributes for Success

Monika Turner
Director of the Public Health Practice Branch, Public Health Division of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care

The Public Health Practice Branch mandate includes:

• Development of public health policy to support public health system standards.
• Development, implementation and monitoring public health performance management framework.
• Reporting on system performance and accountability.
• Ensuring the development, implementation, dissemination, evaluation and maintenance of the public health standards.
• Supporting program policies, public health system performance management framework and public health system/local improvement strategies.

Monika Turner has worked for the Ontario Government since 1985 in several ministries including Education, Colleges and Universities, Natural Resources, and was a land claim negotiator with the former Ontario Native Affairs Secretariat (now the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs).

While in the Ministry of Education, from 2003 to 2006, she was directly responsible the development of healthy public policy initiatives such as: the “Ban of Junk Food” in Elementary Schools and the Daily Physical Activity requirement for all Elementary School students.

Monika did her undergrad and graduate work in Anthropology at McMaster, and has a Masters of Law degree from Osgoode Law School. She is currently doing her Masters of Public Health part-time at the University of Waterloo.

Building Resilient Children

Dr. Ellen Lipman
Child psychiatrist and Associate Professor in the Division of Child Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University

Dr. Ellen Lipman is a core member of the Offord Centre for Child Studies. Her main research interests are in the areas of disadvantaged children and families, group therapies, community-based interventions, effectiveness studies, child and adolescent psychiatry, and epidemiology. She currently holds research grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Her clinical work includes consulting to the Child and Youth Mental Health Team, McMaster Children’s Hospital Chedoke Site, and to family physicians as part of the Hamilton Family Health Team, Mental Health Program.

Managing in a Changing Environment

Dr. Linda Duxbury
Professor, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University

Linda Duxbury is a Professor at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University. She received an M.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Management Sciences from the University of Waterloo. Within the past decade she has completed major studies on Balancing Work and Family in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors; HR and Work-family Issues in the Small Business Sector; Management Support (What is it and Why does it Matter?); Career Development in the Public Sector and in the High Tech Sector; and generational differences in work values. Dr. Duxbury has also conducted research which evaluates the organizational and individual impacts of E-mail, portable offices, telework, flexible work arrangements, shift work and change management including studying what makes a “supportive” manager. 

Dr. Duxbury has published widely in both the academic and practitioner literature and is an accomplished trainer and speaker in the area of supportive work environments, work-life balance, managing the new workforce, recruitment and retention, change management, gender and communication and the communication process. In February 2009 Dr. Duxbury was recognized as one of Deloitte’s Women of Influence.

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Dr. Ernie Lightman
Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Social Work

Ernie Lightman received his BA in economics and political science from the University of Toronto and his MA and PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. After graduation he taught for two years at the London School of Economics and for the last 30 years has been a professor of social policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Social Work.

In 1991-92 he was a one person commission of inquiry looking into unregulated housing – boarding homes, care homes, retirement homes -for vulnerable adults in Ontario. He has published widely, in both academic and popular venues, on a range of topics through the years. For the last seven years he has been Principal Investigator for a series of major studies funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) on precarious work, its health outcomes, and welfare-to-work programs in Ontario. He is the author of Social Policy in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Beth Wilson
Senior Researcher, Community Social Planning Council of Toronto

Beth Wilson is the Senior Researcher with the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto (CSPC-T), a non-profit community organization that works with local communities to advance local needs and promote civic engagement, conducts research on a broad range of community and social issues and engages in public policy analysis with an aim of improving the quality of life of Toronto residents.  Beth has worked on a number of research and community initiatives focused on the labour market and working conditions, poverty, food bank use, affordable housing, community sector funding, and non-status immigrant issues. Beth has a Masters of Social Work degree with a specialty in social policy from the University of Toronto.

Andrew Mitchell
Research Coordinator, Senior Research Association, Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto

Andrew Mitchell is the senior research associate and project co-ordinator for the Social Assistance in the New Economy project at the Faculty of Social Work of the University of Toronto. The SANE project has received four major grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to conduct research into the changing nature of social assistance programs. From 1990 to 2002 he was a Program Director at the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto (now the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto) where he conducted research on poverty, government fiscal policy, the declining economic status of younger families and income security programs such as social assistance. He served on the Low-income Relief Working Group of the Ontario Fair Tax Commission and has published commentaries on Ontario’s changing tax system. Andrew also serves on the Public Affairs Committee of the Daily Bread Food Bank.

Dr. Gary Bloch
Primary Care Director, Inner City Health Associates

Gary Bloch is a family physician with St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. He is Primary Care Director of Inner City Health Associates, a group of physicians working with the homeless across Toronto; and a founding member of the advocacy and intervention organization Health Providers Against Poverty. He is currently working on the development of an educational curriculum for frontline health providers, exploring front line health interventions into homelessness and poverty.

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Annual Conference 2009