Moving Palliative and End-of-life Care Forward

May 17-21, 2010
Tory Building TB 95
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Katharina Kovacs-Burns, MSc (Health Services Admin/Community Medicine/Kinesiology), PhD (Policy Studies)

Director of the Health Sciences Council at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. She oversees interdisciplinary and inter-professional health research, education and practice. Her professional work and research background in health and social program and policy analysis provides her with the perspective of the decision maker and the importance of evidence and Knowledge Translation for informed policy and program decision. She also has experience working with and conducting participatory community-based research with various vulnerable populations, including patients, seniors, those with disabilities and low income or homeless individuals.

She advocates for and promotes patient and public engagement in local, national and international health policy and program decisions as well as with safe, effective and timely treatment and care decisions. This also involves Knowledge Translation or Knowledge to Action initiatives. Determining the impact of behaviours, practices and policies is part of her research and analyses as related to health and quality of life outcomes. Her research involves interdisciplinary teams at the local, provincial, national and international levels, and some are also multi-site across Canada and internationally.

Funding for these research initiatives is from competitive local, national and international funders. She has also held major project contracts with different levels of government investigating and reporting on areas such as homelessness, disability accessibility, community/volunteer sector inclusion in public policy decision making, and health and social service utilization by various vulnerable populations.

She is a member of national policy committees including several with Health Canada, and on several research review committees for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (including Knowledge Translation and Knowledge to Action), the Spinal Cord Injury Solutions Network Research Advisory Committee, and WHO/WHA Patient Safety. Internationally, she aligns with the International Alliance of Patient Organizations, in addition to WHO and World Health Alliance. In her community service she serves as a Board Director for several provincial and national patient organizations including Patients for Patient Safety Canada.

She has published and presented widely, locally to internationally, in many of the above areas of work and research as well as on theoretical and methodological topics such as Citizen Science.

Topic

• What is knowledge translation today

A second generational and applied review of KT research and the use of KT research information, with a specific focus on policy-maker and decision-maker use of research information