Meet Our Team

Dr. David Barber BSc, MD, CCFP

Director, EON and Pan-Canadian CPCSSN

Dr. Barber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University. He is a physician, Chair of the Information Management Committee, Long Term Care Lead and the Director of EON. His research interests focus on Electronic Medical Records and strengthening the study of Canadian Primary Health Care.

Dr. Jennifer Rayner PhD

Director, EPIC and Pan-Canadian CPCSSN

Dr. Jennifer Rayner is the Director of Research and Evaluation at the Alliance for Healthier Communities. She is an applied health services researcher with interests in primary health care, interprofessional teams, health equity and quality improvement. She is an Adjunct Research Professor at Western University within the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto in the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation. Jennifer works in collaboration with researchers, evaluators and policymakers to improve care for people with barriers. She received her PhD of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western and completed post-doctoral training at Ryerson University.

Ayat Salman PhD

Operations Director

Dr. Salman comes to CPCSSN with extensive experience in biobanking sciences. Her research interest and focus are on structural and functional governance in technology as well as sociotechnical procedures in implementation science. She has been a lead expert at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in biobanking since 2011 as well as internationally. She is currently the Chair of the ISO 276 (Biobanking and Biotechnology) Mirror Committee within the Standards Council of Canada.  She is also an active member and a council member of the European, Middle Eastern and African Society for Biopreservation and Biobanking (ESBB).  She is also co-chair of the Communications Committee at the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER).

Brian Forst

Senior IT Data Manager

Brian joined the CPCSSN core team after spending fourteen years as the Data Manager for NAPCReN at the University of Alberta. He has a MSc in Computer Engineering and cofounded the Edmonton Python Meetup to foster growth and connection in the Edmonton technical community. He also has a passion for supporting people in producing high-quality primary care research by working with technical staff to build out reliable tools for delivering robust, clean data.

Rachael Morkem

Senior Data Analyst

Rachael Morkem is part of the CPCSSN core team after spending eight years as the research associate for the Eastern Ontario Network (EON), which is located at Queen’s University. She has a Masters in Epidemiology from Queen’s University as well as a diploma in health information from St. Lawrence College. This education combined with extensive experience coordinating EON projects and analyzing primary care electronic medical record data has provided her with advanced knowledge of data processing, data quality issues, and data analysis.

Chad Herman

Program Manager

Chad comes to CPCSSN with a background in finance and office administration from his work with Queen’s University. As a program manager for CPCSSN Central, Chad supports the CPCSSN co-chairs, Pan-Canadian CPCSSN members, and core team providing project management, strategic guidance, system administration, IT support, and financial administration.

Dr. Kerry McBrien

Director SAPCReN

Dr. Kerry McBrien is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Family Medicine and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary.  She finished medical school and a residency in Family Medicine at the University of Toronto. She completed a Master of Public Health at the Harvard University School of Public Health, focusing on outcomes research, statistical analysis, and healthcare economics, and then completed an AI-HS funded Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Health Economics with the Interdisciplinary Chronic Disease Collaboration. Her research interests include health economics and health services research, with a focus on chronic disease management in primary care.

Dr. Donna Monca

Director NAPCReN

Dr. Manca is a Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Alberta. She is the Clinical Director of NAPCReN which contributes data to CPCSSN. She is the Co-Founder of the BETTER Program (Building on Existing Tools to Improve Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care) and the Medical Director of The BETTER Prevention Practitioner Training Institute. Her research interests include primary care, privacy, ethics, research networks, chronic disease prevention, screening and management, quality improvement and implementation science.

Dr. Alexander Singer MB BAO BCh. CCFP

Director MaPCReN

Dr. Alexander Singer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Manitoba where he also serves as the Director of Research and Quality Improvement. As the Network Director of the MaPCReN, he leads and collaborates on several practice-based research studies. His current research and policy interests include EMR data quality, optimization of EMR use and future interoperability of digital health records in Manitoba. Dr. Singer has led several studies focused on the use of electronic medical record data to conduct large population-based health studies aimed at improving the care delivered to patients in primary care clinics. He is also a family physician clinician-teacher in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Dr. Michelle Howard MSc PhD

Director MUSIC

Michelle Howard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University. Her research focuses on understanding the role and organization of primary care for people with serious and life-limiting illness, by examining the influences of practice models, patterns and policies using population-based health administrative and clinical data.

Dr. Andrew Pinto

Director UPLEARN

Dr. Andrew Pinto is a Public Health and Preventive Medicine specialist and family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital of Unity Health Toronto and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. He is the Director of the University of Toronto Practice-Based Research Network (UPLEARN), the lead for clinical research of Ontario’s POPLAR network, and the founder of the Canadian Primary Care Trials Network.

Dr. Simone Dahrouge PhD

Director OPEN

Dr. Dahrouge is an Associate Professor with the Department of Family Medicine, and a senior scientist at the Bruyère Research Institute and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). Her research focuses on the organization of primary health services research and its effect on quality and equity of care. Her work has the potential to inform future policy recommendations on organizing primary care. She is the Director of our regional Practice Based Learning Network, the Ottawa Practice Enhancement Network (OPEN).

Dr. Amanda Terry PhD

Director DELPHI

Dr. Terry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, the Department of Family Medicine and in the Schulich Interfaculty Program in Public Health at Western University. She is a health services researcher focusing on electronic medical record (EMR) adoption in primary health care, assessing EMR data quality, and optimizing the use of EMRs in the primary health care setting. Dr. Terry is involved in teaching and supervision of graduate students in the Departments of Family Medicine, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, and the Interfaculty Program in Public Health. Prior to completing her PhD, she worked in the Province of Ontario’s former District Health Council system for ten years, conducting health system planning initiatives.

Dr. Brianne Wood PhD

Co-Director NORTHH

While working as a health system and public health epidemiologist in Northwestern Ontario, Dr. Wood participated in a fellowship with the Transdisciplinary Understanding and Training on Research in Primary Health Care (TUTOR-PHC). Her current research interests include health professional education and learning health systems in northern and rural settings.

Dr. Barbara Zelek MD, CCFP, FCFP

Co-Director NORTHH

Dr. Barb Zelek is a rural generalist family physician in Marathon, Ontario and an Associate Professor in the Section of Family Medicine at NOSM. She is the NOSM Clinical Sciences Division Head and former co-chair of the Section of Family Medicine. Her research interests are grounded in primary care and she is passionate about expanding primary care research capacity at NOSM.

Dr. Marie-Thérèse Lussier MD, BSc, MSc, FCFPC

RRSPUM Director

Dr. Lussier is a full professor in the Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine department at Université de Montréal. Until recently, she practiced family medicine at the academic Family Heath Team in Laval (Québec). She is the director of the RRSPUM, the Family Medicine Department’s Practice Based Research Network since 2012. Her main research interests are chronic disease management in primary care with a focus on healthcare provider-patient communication and the use of information technology. She has co-authored a number of scientific articles on this subject. She is co-editor of the only French language textbook on health communication “La communication professionnelle en santé” (2005 and 2016) used in many health sciences faculties of French speaking countries around the world.

Dr. Kris Aubrey-Bassler MD, MSc, CCFP

Director APBRN

Dr. Kris Aubrey-Bassler is an Associate Professor with the Discipline of Family Medicine and the Primary Healthcare Research Unit. Kris’ primary research interests are in the distribution of services between rural and urban hospitals and organizational models of primary care. He is also involved with projects on chronic disease prevention and screening, screening for poverty and nurse-led case management. Dr. Aubrey-Bassler is the scientific lead for PRIIME, the Newfoundland and Labrador participant in the Canadian Primary and Integrated Healthcare Innovations Network.

Dr. Mathew Grandy MD, CCFP

Director MaRNeT

Dr. Mathew Grandy is an associate professor, researcher and family physician in the Department of Family Medicine at Dalhousie University. His research includes the use of Electronic Medical Records, chronic disease management and rug utilization in primary health care in particular chronic opioid use.