Speakers' Biographies

Workshop on Post Market Drug Safety and Effectiveness
May 22-23, 2008
University of Ottawa
Desmarais Building, 55 Laurier East, Room 1150

Day 1:

Steve Morgan, University of British Columbia
Steve Morgan is a health economist and policy analyst at the UBC Centre for Health Services and Policy Research. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and numerous government reports on pharmaceutical policy issues. His work seeks to identify policies that achieve balance between three sometimes-competing goals: providing equitable access to necessary care, managing health expenditures, and promoting valued innovation.

Cindy Evans, Health Products and Food Branch, Health Canada
Cindy Evans is the Director of the Therapeutic Effectiveness and Policy Bureau since February 2005. Her bureau is responsible for a wide range of activities including policy and regulatory development, stakeholder relations, risk communications and regulatory oversight to advertising. Cindy joined MHPD in 2002 as the Manager of Policy and Regulatory Affairs of the same bureau. After completing her M.Sc. in Pharmacology at Queen's University, Cindy began her 15 year public service career in 1993 at the former Bureau of Nonprescription Drugs. She has held various positions within the Health Products and Foods Branch including that of a Drug Safety and Efficacy Evaluator, and as a Manager in the former Bureau of Pharmaceutical Assessment.

Karen Timmerman, Health Canada
Karen Timmerman has been working at Health Canada for 9 years since completing her studies in community health and epidemiology.  At Health Canada, Karen has worked in the areas of national health surveillance as well as in the Marketed Health Products Directorate for several years before moving to the Biologics and Genetic Therapies Directorate (BGTD) in 2005 as a senior science policy analyst.  She has been representing BGTD on the Progressive Licensing Project since the beginning of the project in 2005.

Ginette Tognet, Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB)
Ginette Tognet is the Director of the Compliance and Enforcement Branch at Health Canada. She had been Senior Policy Analyst with the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) since 1998 where she played a major role in the Road Map for the Next Decade and with the Working Group on Price Review Issues. Ginette has a law degree from the University of Manitoba and an M.B.A. from the University of Ottawa and she is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada.  She held various assignments with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade before joining the PMPRB. 

Mike Tierney, CADTH
Mike Tierney is the Vice-President of the Common Drug Review (CDR) at the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). He joined CADTH in May 2005 as the Director of the CDR program. Mike is a former Director of Pharmacy at The Ottawa Hospital.  During a career in hospital pharmacy that spanned more than two decades, he was involved in the provision of drug information services, training of hospital pharmacy residents, drug use management programs, clinical research, and pharmacy administration.

Brent Fraser, Ontario Public Drug Programs 
Brent Fraser is the Director, Drug Program Services, Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. He was recently involved in a review of Ontario’s drug system which led to a number of legislative and system changes within the public drug sector. This work is continuing through the operations of the Ontario Public Drug Program.
Previously, Brent was the Associate Director, Pharmaceutical Services Coordination in the Drug Programs Branch. Prior to working at the ministry, Brent was a pharmacist at The Hospital for Sick Children, specializing in intensive care and drug information services.

Susan Pierce, First Nations & Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada
Susan Pierce is a gaduate of Dalhousie with a BscPharm. She has worked at NIHB for the past 4 years spent considerable time working on formulary and drug plan issues, on a hospital and provincial and federal levels.

Neena Chappell, University of Victoria
Dr. Chappell is the Canada Research Chair in Social Gerontology and professor of sociology with the University of Victoria. She has been conducting gerontological research for 30 years.  She established two world-class university research Centres on Aging with the University of Manitoba and University of Victoria.  She has been studying care practices for those with dementia since the early 1990s and is currently co-principal investigator of the Alzheimer’s Drug Therapy Initiative of British Columbia.

Jeff Kirby, Dalhousie University
Jeff Kirby is a faculty member of the Department of Bioethics, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University. As a health ethics consultant with a combined background in medicine and philosophy, Jeff provides comprehensive ethics support for health policy development and assists in the ethics-informed management of provincial and national health organizational issues. He is currently the Co- chair of the Joint Oncology Drug Review Ethics Advisory Group. 

Judy McPhee, Nova Scotia  Department of Health
Judy McPhee graduated from Dalhousie University College of Pharmacy in 1979. She worked for most of career in Hospital Pharmacy as a Pharmacy Manager. She has also worked in Community Practice and in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Most recently and currently Judy is working in government as the Manager of Insured Pharmaceutical Services in Nova Scotia. She is responsible for managing the provincial drug formulary and setting policy and direction for provincial drug programs.

Muhammad Mamdani, Applied Health Research Center, Keenan Research Centre
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital
Dr. Mamdani is the Director of the Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC), the Keenan Research Centre, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. He is also Associate Professor in the Dept of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation of the Faculty of Medicine, where he supervised graduate students and an adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). He holds a PharmD from the University of Michigan, a MA in Economics from Wayne State University, and a MPH from Harvard University and has published over 150 studies in peer-reviewed medical journals in the field of pharmacoepidemiology.

Mary E. Wiktorowicz, York University
Mary Wiktorowicz is Chair and Associate Professor in the School of Health Policy and
Management at York University.  Her research adopts a comparative lens to study mental health policy and pharmaceutical policy.  A current study explores the organizational and governance models ten local mental health service networks use to coordinate mental health care.  Her research in pharmaceutical policy involves an international comparison of post-market pharmaco-surveillance strategies.  She holds a Master of Science from Dalhousie University, and a Ph.D. in Health Administration from the University of Toronto.

Day 2:

Ralph Edwards, World Health Organization, Uppsala Monitoring Centre
Ralph Edwards trained in both general internal medicine and clinical pharmacology. He has been a practicing specialist physician and also taught at undergraduate and graduate levels in both areas for 17 years. He worked in clinical toxicology in the fields of drug abuse, acute and chronic poisoning, toxicity from industrial chemicals as well as adverse drug reactions. Since 1990 Ralph has been Professor and Director, the Uppsala Monitoring Centre, (the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring) where he has overall responsibility for the development and scientific and professional activities of the Centre, matters relating to the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring, and relationships with other organisations.

David Henry, ICES
Professor David Henry is a physician and clinical pharmacologist and has an interest in all aspects of medicines use by communities.  Professor Henry is currently the President and CEO, of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto; Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Professor Henry was instrumental in establishing the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) evaluation process now in use. He has worked with the World Health Organization and has expertise in international systems for pricing of therapeutic drugs.

David Blumenthal, Member U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee “The Future of Drug Safety Boston. 
He is also Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Blumenthal was the founding chairman of AcademyHealth, the national organization of health services researchers.  He is also Director of the Harvard University Interfaculty Program for Health Systems Improvement. From 1987-1991 he was Senior Vice President at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His research interests include the dissemination of health information technology, quality management in health care, and consequences of academic-industrial relationships in the health sciences.

Robert Peterson, University of British Columbia
In 1982, Dr Peterson joined the Departments of Paediatrics and Pharmacology at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Medicine as Associate Professor and Medical Director of the Ontario Provincial Poison Information Centre at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.  In 1987 he became Director of the Children’s Hospital Research Institute.  He became Professor of Paediatrics and Pharmacology in 1989, and in 1990, Chairman of the Department of Paediatrics.  Dr. Peterson completed a Master’s of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Health Care Management at Harvard University School of Public Health in 1996.  He joined the Therapeutic Products Programme, Health Canada, as Associate Director General in January 1999 and in July 2000, became the Director General of the Therapeutic Products Directorate. He left this post in March, 2005 to become Clinical Professor of Paediatrics at the University of British Columbia and Director of Child Health BC.