Building careers in knowledge translation practice

November 05, 2021

Speaker

Alison Hoens - Knowledge Broker & Clinical Professor, UBC; Affiliate Knowledge Broker, Arthritis Research Canada; Research Associate, CHEOS
Gayle Scarrow - Director of Knowledge Translation, Michael Smith Health Research BC
Kevin Sauvé - Head of Knowledge Translation, Canada's Michael Smith Genome Science Centre (unable to attend the session)
Kimberly Miller - Senior Leader of Clinical Education and Special Projects, Sunny Hill Health Centre

Are you interested in building a career in knowledge translation? Are you interested in learning more about the various roles for KT practitioners? Are you curious about tools and resources available to support your KT journey? Want to learn more about the competencies required for a KT career? We are here to help!

Speakers:

  • Alison Hoens is a physical therapy knowledge broker and clinical professor within the UBC Department of Physical Therapy, an affiliate knowledge broker for Arthritis Research Canada, and a research associate at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences. From 2017 to 2019, she was the KT specialist for the Methods Clusters at the BC SUPPORT Unit. She has facilitated partnerships in over 65 projects with more than 500 researchers, clinicians, decision maker and patients, associated with more than $17 million in research funding and development of 22 resources that have been accessed over ~ 600,000 times worldwide.
  • Gayle Scarrow is the director of knowledge translation at Michael Smith Health Research BC. She leads the development, implementation, evaluation and ongoing management of the organization’s knowledge translation plan for the purpose of fostering and accelerating the impact of health research in BC and beyond. She has held numerous roles in health care and health research for the past 30 years including a radiation technologist, research coordinator, research writer, KT manager and, through her work with Health Research BC, as a knowledge user on various research grants to both contribute to the academic KT literature and to inform Health Research BC’s KT work.
  • Kevin Sauvé is head of knowledge translation at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre (​​GSC) at BC Cancer, where he manages a team in development and delivery of strategies and materials that help synthesize, exchange and disseminate GSC’s research. His expertise is in science communication consulting, writing and journalism. He has worked with the CBC and as a freelance science journalist, holds a Master of Journalism from UBC, concentrated on science, and a Bachelor’s in Biology, from the University of Guelph, focused on neuroscience. He is also the recipient of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Health Research Communications Award. (Note: Kevin Sauve was unable to attend the session) 
  • Dr. Kimberly Miller (PT, PhD) is senior leader, clinical education and special projects in Sunny Hill Health Centre at BC Children’s Hospital, where she supports and advances practice-based knowledge translation and research for child development and rehabilitation services. She has worked as a physiotherapist, academic educator and clinical researcher in Canada and Australia, and it’s through those experiences that she became passionate about bridging the gap between research and clinical practice.  She’s committed to patient and family-oriented practice-based research and co-design of electronic resources that support patients and families in participating in preference-sensitive evidence-informed decision-making with their healthcare providers.

 

Upcoming webinar

Alex Haagaard and Dr. Clare Ardern

Date

April 26, 2024

Breaking barriers: open science tackles wicked problems and reduces research waste

In 2024, KT Connects is focusing on open science — the practice of making scientific inputs, outputs, and processes freely available to all with minimal restrictions. Learn more

Webinar summary

Friday, April 26  

12 – 1 p.m. PST 

“Wicked problems” are challenges that are difficult to solve and identify because of their incomplete, contradictory, and evolving requirements. To tackle wicked problems, collaboration is essential. Open science (sometimes called ‘open scholarship’ or ‘open research’) aims to solve wicked problems by promoting collaboration, transparency, and knowledge and resource sharing. By including people with lived experiences on research teams, open science helps to make research relevant to knowledge users and reduces research waste. In this session, we will explore how open science principles help researchers authentically engage knowledge users in high-quality research to solve wicked problems in health research.

Learning objectives

After this webinar, the audience will be able to:

  1. Identify knowledge users for specific research projects
  2. Describe three ways open science practices reduce research waste
  3. List at least two barriers encountered by patient authors that open science practices can help to overcome.

Speaker bio

Alex Haagaard is a design strategist specialising in digital accessibility, community engagement, disability justice and health equity. Alex has lived with chronic pain since early childhood. This experience informs their interest in designing and advocating for system-level changes to how healthcare services are conceptualized, planned and delivered. Alex is a member of Pain BC’s Putting the Pieces Together conference steering committee, and co-chair of the Chronic Pain Network’s Knowledge Mobilization and Implementation Science Committee. 

Dr. Clare Ardern is a physiotherapist and assistant professor in the department of physical therapy at UBC. Her research team brings researchers, patients, clinicians and health policymakers together to design digital health interventions for musculoskeletal problems. Dr Ardern is the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy (JOSPT) and JOSPT Open. She hosts the popular weekly JOSPT Insights podcast, which reaches over 16,000 regular listeners.