Claire Betker, PhD, RN, CCHN(C) is the Scientific Director of the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health located at STFX University in Antigonish Nova Scotia. As registered nurse and CNA certified community health nurse, Claire has worked in public health, primary health care and home health at a local, regional, provincial and national level. Claire is currently the president of the Canadian Nurses Association and a past president of the Community Health Nurses of Canada. Her PhD research focused on the capacity for public health leadership to advance health equity, a knowledge base that greatly informs her contributions to the public health field.

David B. Brown [bio to follow]

Holly Buhler is a Regional Practice Lead, Research and Knowledge Translation, with British Columbia’s Interior Health Authority.  Prior to joining Interior Health in 2013, she worked in various research and evaluation roles at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. She holds a Masters of Medical Science from Uppsala University, a Masters of Geographic Information Systems from Lund University, and is a Credentialed Evaluator through the Canadian Evaluation Society.  In her current role, Holly supports research-related activities within her organization with a goal of promoting the production and use of evidence for effective decision making across the healthcare system.

Danielle Charron is the City of Hamilton Public Health Services Library Coordinator, working in the Planning and Business Improvement division. She is a member of the Ontario Public Health Libraries Association, having served as its president from 2014 to 2015, and is also a member of the Hamilton and District Health Libraries Network. Her past work experience includes acting as a Trial Search Coordinator during her time as a co-op student with Cochrane’s Effective Practice and Organisation of Care group. Danielle has a background in health science, education and information science and has combined these skills during her tenure as a knowledge broker in NCCMT’s Knowledge Broker Mentorship Program from 2015 to 2016. 

Deborah Ann McNeil is the Scientific Director for the Population, Public and Indigenous Health Strategic Clinical Network (SCN) and the Maternal Newborn Child and Youth SCN in Alberta Health Services. She also leads a team of scientists and research associates who use integrated knowledge translation approaches to generate and translate scientific evidence of importance for Population, Public and Indigenous Health. Deb is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Nursing and Cummings School of Medicine. She received a BSc in Nursing from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and has both an MN with specialization in neonatal care and a PhD with specialization in epidemiology from the University of Calgary. Deb has a 25-year clinical background in Neonatal Intensive Care and has held research positions in maternal child health and population public health for the past 15 years. Deb’s current research is focused on perinatal depression and anxiety, measuring health inequities, childhood immunization, and group pre- and postnatal care. She has expertise in a variety of research approaches including epidemiologic and qualitative research methods, as well as synthesis and systematic evidence reviews.

Jackie Muresan, RN, MSc, is an Advisor-Knowledge Broker at Region of Peel-Public Health. She leads a team focused on knowledge management, capacity building and linkage and exchange to support evidence-informed decision making. She has experience working in the community as a public health nurse and prenatal educator. She worked at NCCMT for several years as a Research Coordinator and Knowledge Broker, starting shortly after the centre first opened. Her area of expertise is knowledge translation in public health, and she is co-author of a Canadian textbook chapter on evidence-informed practice in community health nursing.

Antonietta Palumbo [bio to follow]

Dr. Mark-Andrew Stefan is a Queen's University medical graduate who completed his Masters in Public Health and residency in Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Université de Montréal. Since 2010, he's been working at the Laval Public Health Department in Laval, Québec, as medical advisor on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.

Since 2012, he has accumulated several other roles in the Department, namely Chief of Preventive Medicine and Health Surveillance, and Head of both the Teaching and the Continuing Medical Education Committees. As clinical supervisor with Université de Montréal's School of Public Health, he has been actively involved in sharing his passion for prevention while supervising Masters students and medical residents in Public Health and Preventive Medicine.  

Colleen van Berkel meets complex and challenging issues with focus and determination. She brings more than three decades of experience in public health to her role as a senior knowledge translation specialist, where she provides expertise related to the NCCMT’s knowledge translation products and site operations. At the core of Colleen’s career is a desire to make a meaningful contribution to public health in Canada. Read More

Colleen completed her Bachelor of Nursing Science from Queen’s University and her Master of Health Science from McMaster University. Prior to joining the NCCMT, Colleen managed a variety of public health programs during her impressive 31 years with the City of Hamilton Public Health Services, where, most recently, she held the position of manager of the applied research and evaluation team. By joining the NCCMT team, Colleen saw an opportunity to make an impact by leveraging her extensive public health management experience in a new setting.

Colleen has held a clinical cross-appointment with the McMaster University School of Nursing, during which she collaborated with the Hamilton Public Health Research Education and Development (Teaching Health Unit and PHRED) program. Colleen also participated as a member of the NCCMT Advisory Group. She is committed to lifelong learning and appreciates opportunities for working collectively to achieve the NCCMT’s objectives.

Outside of the office, Colleen enjoys reading and staying active through kayaking, curling, playing golf and travelling—she has even walked the Portuguese and Spanish Camino.

Kienan Williams  is a member of Sandy Lake First Nation (Ontario) and is passionate about health equity with Indigenous people, using a data-informed lens privileging Indigenous Data Governance. He is currently the Program Lead for Innovation and Research within the Indigenous Wellness Core of Alberta Health Services. He completed a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Arizona in 2013. In this role he uses strength-based Indigenous Worldviews to address health inequities from a systems thinking approach. He has experience and knowledge of Alberta Health Service’s structures and processes, such as the Indigenous Health Commitments: Roadmap to Wellness.  Kienan is an active lead and contributor to projects that improve Indigenous communities’ quality of life such as: Data Sharing Agreement based on the Health Analytics Portal technology to repatriate Alberta Health Services data to individual Indigenous communities.