Speaker Presentations
Elliott Churchill MS MA
Elliott Churchill has spent most of the last 20 years consulting in ministries of health and training approximately 2,500 public health staff in 96 countries in various CDC-sponsored programs. Currently, her primary areas of interest are communications strategies for public health in the absence of sophisticated technology and the creation of interactive communications networks that include public offi cials, the general public, public health staff , and representatives of the mass media. She has taught faculty of universities, graduate students, ministry of health staff , and district medical offi cers about such diffi cult issues as HIV/AIDS, hemorrhagic fever, and chronic disease, including heart disease, cancer, and birth defects. Programs in which she has worked have been funded primarily through USAID, with CDC as program manager, but she has also been seconded to UNICEF and WHO for specifi c assignments.
Ms. Churchill retired from CDC on January 3, 2006, but states her intention only to leave the things she is not fond of, i.e., politics and committee meetings, and to keep all those she loves, which are teaching, travelling, and working with new people in new settings.
Bryan Kolb PhD FRSC
Bryan Kolb is a native Calgarian who is a Professor in the Department Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, where he has been since 1976. He received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University and did postdoctoral work at the U of Western Ontario and Montreal Neurological Institute. His recent work has focused on the development of the prefrontal cortex and how neurons of the cerebral cortex change in response to various developmental factors including hormones, experience, stress, drugs, neurotrophins, and injury, and how these changes are related to behaviour. Bryan Kolb has published 5 books, including two textbooks with Ian Whishaw (Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, Sixth Edition; Introduction to Brain and Behavior, Second Edition), and over 300 articles and chapters. Kolb is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Killam Fellow of the Canada Council. He is currently a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program in the Experience-Based Brain Development program.
Wayne MacPhail
Wayne MacPhail is the president of w8nc inc., an emerging technology communications company. His clients include McClelland and Stewart, the Alzheimer Society of Ontario, McMaster University, York University and Mohawk College. He is also the founder of the rabble podcast network and is currently working with rabble.ca to launch rabbletv.
Mr. MacPhail has worked as a magazine and newspaper reporter and editor, founded the Southam InfoLab in 1991, and has developed online content for all the major networks in Canada. He has taught online writing and social media at a variety of colleges and universities, and currently writes a weekly tech column for rabble.ca. He's also a book author and playwright.
John Parboosingh MB FRCSC
John Parboosingh is Professor Emeritus, Medical Education and Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Calgary. His curriculum vitae covers 40 years of clinical and scholarly activities refl ected in over 90 peer reviewed publications.
Since retiring from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2002, where he held the position of Director of Professional Development, Dr. Parboosingh focused his career on helping multi-disciplinary teams to achieve organizational change. The career change led to a deeper understanding of team member interactivity, motivation and the natural fl ow of information in communities of practice (CoPs) and how these variables impact team cohesion and quality of care.
Dr. Parboosingh's career change commenced in 1999 with joining CPSquare, an organization of international experts in CoPs. He completed CP²'s four-week "Foundations Course on CoPs" found at http://www.cpsquare.com/edu/foundations/index.htm. The following year he became a guest speaker on the course –http://www.cpsquare.com/edu/foundations/GuestSpeakers.htm.
Dr. Parboosingh studied the application of CoPs in companies such as Daimler Chrysler, Boeing and Dufasco as well as in non-government organizations, such as the World Bank. Not surprisingly, his fi eld work in CoPs has focused on teams in health care and education. In recent years he has studied CoPs in health care teams in Canada, USA, Kenya and Uruguay.
Dr. Parboosingh has consulting projects with the American Academy of Pediatrics; Radiological Society of North America; Public Broadcasting System, USA; SEARCH Canada; Women's College Hospital, Toronto; Toronto
Robert Wedel MD CCFP FCFP
Robert Wedel has been a practising family physician in Taber, Alberta for the past 32 years, and also serves as the Medical Director of the Chinook Regional Palliative Care Program. He is currently the Physician Lead of the Chinook Primary Care Network, a network of 23 clinic sites and 90 family physicians. He also Co-chairs Alberta AIM, Alberta's Primary Care Improvement Steering Committee.
Dr. Wedel is a Fellow of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Calgary, and an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Alberta.
He is a Past President of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (2004), and currently chairs the CFPC Advisory Committee on Primary Care Renewal.
Dr. Wedel has received the U of C Faculty of Medicine Award of Excellence in Clinical Research, and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Award for Organizational Vision and Leadership.
