News and Stories

Congratulations to investigators Janet Hatcher-Roberts, Alison Krentel, Gail Webber, and Vivian Welch, who have been recognized as Canadian women leaders in global health. Their work reaches far and wide, impacting the lives of vulnerable populations around the world.

 

Their names are among many influential women on the 2018 list Canadian Women in Global Health. These individuals are influencers and experts in their domain. This list, put together by the Canadian Society for International Health, recognizes them for their tremendous contributions to the field of Global Health.

Alison Krentel, Janet Hatcher Roberts, Gail Webber, and Vivian Welch are inspiring us all through their life changing research. Bruyère is truly proud of them and their tremendous work.

 

Over the past 25 years, Janet Hatcher Roberts has contributed to global health through research and policy capacity development and partnerships and to large scale development projects with Ministries of Health, Education, Children and Youth, and has mentored and taught 100s of young professionals toward careers in global health. Through time spent at IDRC and IOM, as CEO of CSIH, and as a consultant to WHO, PAHO, World Bank, UNFPA, CIDA and IDRC, Janet’s strength are in consolidating and implementing partnerships across and within sectors to achieve results that improve health and wellbeing. Building capacity for evidence-based decision making to promote planning and policy processes that consider equity has been a focus within the overall goal of strengthening of health systems in over 30 countries. The promotion of partnerships between government, non-governmental organizations, and academia has also been a long time and important role that Janet has played as well.

 

Alison Krentel has been a researcher and consultant in public health since 1996, working in over 14 countries. Her research interests include facilitating community engagement, the use of implementation research to support health systems, and the translation of research results into programmatic action. Alison’s areas of expertise include neglected tropical diseases, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. She is an investigator with the Bruyère Health Research Institute and an assistant professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and is a Senior Research Fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Knowledge Translation, Technology Assessment for Health Equity. She received both her Masters of Science in Public Health (1999) and her PhD (2008) from LSHTM. She has worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the German Development Agency.

 

Gail Webber is a family physician and researcher based in Ottawa, Canada. She has more than 20 years of clinical experience in primary care, including prenatal and intra-partum obstetric care. She has a Master’s in Women’s Studies from the University of York, UK (1992) and a PhD in Population Health from the University of Ottawa (2008). She is Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa and Associate Research Scientist at Bruyère Health Research Institute, Ottawa. She has received multiple research grants from Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Grand Challenges Canada, UK Aid, and the International Development Research Centre. Her current research is in collaboration with her Tanzanian research colleague, Dr. Bwire Chirangi. The purpose of their implementation research is to improve women’s access to antenatal and delivery services in order to reduce maternal mortality in rural Tanzania and to improve access to family planning services.

 

Vivian Welch contributes to global health in her role as co-convenor of the Campbell and Cochrane Equity Methods group where she leads methodological development on how to assess whether research applies to vulnerable populations, often excluded from primary research studies. She led an influential Campbell systematic review relevant to global health focused on mass deworming for children in low and middle-income countries. Vivian has contributed to other influential Campbell and Cochrane systematic reviews on school and preschool feeding, which have informed World Food Programme policies. Since 2017 Vivian has been Editor in Chief of the Campbell Collaboration, which aims to provide better evidence for a better world, with a focus on informing global social policies.