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Leanne Abbott
Leanne is a Master's Candidate working with Co-investigator Hugh Armstrong on the Theme II sub-project, The Social and Technological Life of an Indicator: Indicators that include women's occupational health.

Academic and Professional Experience
Leanne completed her Honours Bachelor of Social Work at Carleton University in April 2003. She also holds an Honours Arts Applied Studies Co-op degree in English Literature from the University of Waterloo.

Her professional experience is primarily in the non-profit and social services sectors. With certification in suicide intervention and concurrent disorders from the Canadian Health Mental Health Association, Leanne is experienced in supporting clients with mental health, addiction and developmental issues.

Alison Adam [top]
Alison Adam is a Collaborator on the ACTION for Health project. She provides guidance and expertise in areas of computer ethics, gender issues and information technology.

Academic and Professional Experience
Dr. Adam is Professor of Information Systems and Head of School at the Information Systems Institute (ISI) at the University of Salford in Manchester, England. She holds a BSc in Physics and a PhD in the History of Science. She spent several years working in the software industry building systems used by thousands of users in ICI in Western Europe, before working on an Alvey project in the Department of Systems at the University of Lancaster. She was Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computation at the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), from 1986 to 2000. She joined the ISI in 2000.

Research Interests
Dr Adam's research interests are in areas of computer ethics, gender and information technology. Her book Gender, Ethics and Information Technology is published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2005.

Hugh Armstrong [top]
Hugh Armstrong is a sub-project Co-investigator. He is collaborating with Karen Messing and Ellen Balka on the project, The Social and Technological Life of an Indicator: Indicators that include women's occupational health.

Pat Armstrong [top]
Pat Armstrong is a Co-investigator on several sub-projects, including The Social and Technological Life of an Indicator: Indicators that include women's occupational health.

Academic and Professional Experience
Pat Armstrong is co-author or editor of such books on health care as Caring For/Caring About, Exposing Privatization: Women and Health Reform in Canada; Unhealthy Times, Heal Thyself: Managing Health Care Reform; Wasting Away: The Undermining of Canadian Health Care; Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn From Canada; Medical Alert: New Work Organizations In Health Care: Vital Signs: Nursing in Transition; and Take Care: Warning Signals for Canada's Health System. She has also published on a wide variety of issues related to women's work and to social policy. On the basis of this work, she has been called as an expert witness in more than a dozen cases linked to women's work, pay equity and women's rights.

She has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology at York University and Director of the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University. Currently, she is a partner in the National Network on Environments and Women's Health and chairs a working group on health reform that crosses the Centres of Excellence for Women's Health. She holds a CHSRF/CHIR Chair in Health Services and Nursing Research.

Research Interests
Women and work in Canada; Social Policy, especially Canadian health care policy; pay equity; Social Theory.

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Ellen Balka [top]
Ellen Balka is ACTION for Health's Principal Investigator. She is also a Co-investigator on the sub-project, The Social and Technological Life of an Indicator: Indicators that include women's occupational health. In addition, Ellen oversees several sub-projects including: The role of the Internet in lay user consumption of cancer-related information; Mid-Main meets the EPR: Vancouver Case study; Vancouver Coastal Health Case(s); and Vancouver Public Library Cases.

Academic and Professional Experience
Dr. Balka is a Professor in Simon Fraser University's School of Communication, and a Senior Scientist with the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor to the University of Victoria's School of Health Information Sciences. Ellen's past positions have included teaching computer science and women's studies, as well as running Memorial University's Women's Studies Program from 1991 to 1992. She has also held numerous positions with professional associations and community groups throughout her career.

Ellen's research has been concerned with women's interaction with information technology in diverse settings. Articles and book chapters written by Dr. Balka have addressed a range of topics related to socio-technical aspects of information technology, and have appeared in a variety of journals including medical journals, computer science publications, social science journals and books, and publications aimed at policy-makers. Most of her recent work in the health sector has been concerned with documenting the ways that policy eventually influences end-users of information technology.

Ellen is the author of Computer Networking: Spinsters on the Web (Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women), and Co-Editor of Women, Work and Computerization: Charting a Course to the Future (Norwell, MA: Kluwer). She is currently working on an edited collection about information technology in Canada's health sector, and a monograph about end-user's involvement with technology design.

Ellen holds an Interdisciplinary Doctorate (Computer Science, Communication and Women's Studies) and a Master's degree in Women's Studies from Simon Fraser University, and a BA (Geography and Environmental Studies) from the University of Washington. Ellen received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Workplace Innovation in 2003.

Research Interests

• Design, Implementation and Use of Health Information Technologies
• Gender and the Design of Technological Systems
• Impacts of Technological Change on Women and Minorities
• Participatory Design and Participatory Ergonomics
• Public Participation in Technology Assessments
• Technology and Public Policy
• User Participation in Design of Technological Systems
• Women's Occupational Health
  

Leslie Bella [top]
Leslie Bella is a Co-investigator on the Theme I sub-project, Macmorran Community Centre: An Alternative Site for Exploring Public Internet Use, Access and Equity and its Relationships to the Goals of the Health Sector is based in Newfoundland.

Academic and Professional Experience
Leslie is a professor in the School of Social Work at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where she has served as Associate Director, Graduate Officer and chair of the PhD Studies Committee. She is also the editor of the electronic magazine, The Hererosexism Enquirer (http://www.mun.ca/the). She plans a sabbatical in the winter of 2004 to look at positive space programmes in Canadian universities.

Leslie spent her 1992 - 93 sabbatical in Stephenville in western Newfoundland, working with the mental health clinic of Sir Thomas Roddick and with the Bay St George women's centre to develop a community based strategy to end violence. Today she serves on the committee guiding the Newfoundland's violence prevention initiative, and on a Regional Coordinating Committee against violence.

She has investigated the development of professional associations, and published several articles on social work and on other human service professions. She has developed curriculum related to rural social work, including social work with aboriginal peoples and other diverse populations. For several years Leslie served on the various boards and committees of Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work, including a term as co-chair of the Board of Accreditation.

Leslie received a PhD in Political Science from the University of Alberta in 1981, a Master's of Social Work from the University of British Columbia in 1969 and a BA in Architectural Studies from the University of Newcastle-upon Tyne in 1966.

Research Interests
While at Memorial University she has pursued several areas of research such as professionalism, social policy, family making and violence prevention. A current research interest relates to the use of the internet in a social action project to identify and challenge heterosexism.

Allan Best [top]
Allan Best is a Co-investigator with ACTION for Health.

Academic and Professional Work
Dr Best is a Senior Scientist with the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. He is also a Clinical Professor in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology at the University of British Columbia, and an Associate in the Institute of Health Promotion. He is a consulting professor of Health Studies at the University of Waterloo and a member of the professional staff at the BC Cancer Agency.

Dr Best's academic, research and corporate consulting activities have earned him a reputation as a world leader in health promotion and organizational health. He served as the founding Chair of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Waterloo, the world's first interdisciplinary department integrating the biological and behavioural sciences to study health promotion. He has been elected Fellow for outstanding research contribution by the Canadian Psychological Association, Society of Behavioural Medicine, and American Psychological Association. Allan was awarded the 1996 O. Harold Warwick prize by the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) for outstanding contributions to cancer control, following his term as an inaugural member of the National Cancer Institute of Canada's Advisory Committee on Cancer Control, 1988-1994. He currently serves as a member of the NCIC's senior Committee on Research. Dr Best earned his PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1973 from the University of Waterloo.

Research Interests
As Director of the Community Partnerships for Health Research program in the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, Allan leads a unique program of research and training initiatives built upon and uniting four essential cornerstones:

• Systems theory, which studies the complexity of systems, focusing on the interplay between programs and policies
• Partnerships between research producers and research users, to maximize relevance and utilization of results
• Transdisciplinarity, which brings together researchers and policy makers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to forge new ways of approaching health system issues
• Knowledge exchange processes designed to strengthen the links among research, policy and practice communities

Rick Bishop [top]
Rick Bishop is a Master's Candidate working with Co-investigator, Leslie Bella

Nina Boulus [top]
Nina Boulus is a PhD Candidate working with Principal Investigator Ellen Balka on the Theme II sub-project, Mid-Main meets the EPR: Patient Views of Electronic Health Records.

Academic and Professional Experience
Nina holds a Master's degree from the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. Her thesis draws from the field of System Development, and is concerned with the ongoing implementation of the Electronic Patient Records (EPR) at the national hospital in Norway, with the goal of developing a deeper understanding of the sociotechnical complexities and challenges of implementing and managing EPR. Nina considers the transition process a mutual, dynamic and reflexive transformation of both Information Infrastructure (II) and situated practice of use. She illustrates how medical records and work practice is a part of the larger, heterogeneous socio-technical network, and follows an infrastructural orientation that focuses on the heritage of the installed base. Nina's research suggests the need for the development of strategies to manage gradual transitions.

Research Interests
Technology in context and studies undertaken within the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW); Information Infrastructure; Actor-Network Theory; Health Information Systems

Sherri Brown [top]
Sherri is a PhD Candidate working with Principal Investigator, Ellen Balka, as Research Assistant.

Academic and Professional Experience
Sherri holds a B.A from Concordia University (2002) and a M.A. in Political Science from the University of Calgary (2005). Currently, she is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. Research for her doctoral dissertation examines the architecture, roles, and behaviour of global institutions and actors in health governance, with a focus on HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Research Interests
Sherri's research interests are in health governance.

Sue Bradley [top]
Sue is Assistant to the ACTION for Health Principal Investigator, Ellen Balka.

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Hélène Cameron[top]
Hélène is a Consultant on the ACTION for Health project providing assistance with synthesis and dissemination of findings to non-academic audiences.

Academic and Professional Experience
Hélène has an extensive background in health education and health promotion. For eight years a consultant in Health Canada’s Education and Training Unit and later Director of Programs for the Canadian Association of School Health, her duties included the management of projects involving research, publications, conferences, workshops, and promotional activities. As a self-employed consultant, she has conducted research and reported on the status of health education in the provincial/territorial departments of education for Health Canada. Under contract to La Fédération des francophones de la Colombie-Britannique, she organized a symposium for health professionals and health-related organizations and later coordinated RésoSanté Colombie-Britannique and managed the French-language BC HealthGuide Program for the improvement of access to health services by French-speaking British Columbians. She was advisor and community liaison for two related projects at Vancouver Coastal Health and the Provincial Health Services Authority. Finally, Hélène Cameron was for six years the Executive Director of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, in which capacity she was responsible not only for the internal operation of the organization and all of its projects, but also liaising with government officials and partner agencies.

Lindi Coyne [top]
Lindi is a third-year undergraduate student in Communication at Simon Fraser University, and she joined ACTION for Health as an administrative assistant in June 2006.

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Ursula Eddington [top]
Ursula Edgington is Assistant to Co-investigator, Frances Griffiths on Theme I (Lay-user Issues) sub-projects.

Academic and Professional Experience
Ursula is studying part-time at the University of Warwick for BA (Hons) in Social Studies.

She is also Secretary to the Co-Deputy Directors of the Centre for Primary Health Care Studies at the University of Warwick. She transferred to the Primary Health Care Studies from the International Office at the University.

Gunther Eysenbach [top]
Gunther Eysenbach is a Co-Investigator with ACTION for Health.

Academic and Professional Experience
Gunther Eysenbach, MD, MPH is currently a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Between 1999 and 2001, he founded and led a research group on cybermedicine and eHealth at the University of Heidelberg, where his main research interest was consumer health informatics. He came to Canada in March 2002 to join Alex Jadad in developing the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation in Toronto.

He is the author of a German textbook for computers in medicine, editor of a loose-leaf book on computers for physicians, as well as founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Dr. Eysenbach has authored more than 110 publications, including more than 30 book-chapters, as well as several pioneer studies and comments on cybermedicine, e-health and Consumer health informatics, published in respected international journals such as JAMA, BMJ, Lancet. He has a Master's in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Research Interests
Dr Eysenbach's research focuses on patient / doctor interaction in the age of cyberspace, the quality of internet information, teleepidemiology and teleprevention, electronic patient education systems, public health, evaluation and impact of information technologies in medicine, evidence based medicine, information retrieval and management in medicine and multimedia in medicine.

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Jana Fear [top]
Jana is a Graduate Research Assistant working with Co-investigator Roma Harris on the Theme I sub-project, Rural Women's Health Information Seeking: Matching e-Health Initiatives with Consumer Realities. She is responsible for coordinating the various aspects of the project and facilitating communication among the co-investigators and partners involved. She will also assist with participant recruitment, data collection and analysis, and writing research reports. In addition to her work on Dr. Harris’ sub-projects, Jana’s responsibilities include administrative coordination of Theme 1 projects.

Academic and Professional Experience
Jana is a PhD student in Library & Information Sciences at The University of Western Ontario. She has recently completed, under the supervision of Dr. Roma Harris, a project examining and evaluating Consumer Health Information on the Internet. As well as her involvement in the ACTION for Health project, Jana has been involved in the development of a Librarianship for Evidence-Based Health Care course with Dr. Nadine Wathen, and is currently collaborating on two systematic reviews (Risk Indicators of Violence Against Women and Risk Indicators for Elder Abuse) with Dr. Harriet MacMillan’s CIHR New Emerging Team program, Department of Psychiatry, McMaster University.

Research Interests
Her research interests involve understanding how people seek and use health information and the role of technologies, particularly the Internet, in the communication of health information.

Patrick Feng [top]
During his post-doctoral fellowship, Patrick collaborated with Principal Investigator Ellen Balka and Staff Researcher Nicki Kahnamoui on the sub-project, Mid-Main meets the EPR: Vancouver Case study.

Christopher J. Finlay [top]
Christopher Finlay was a Researcher with the ACTION for Health project.

Academic and Professional Experience
Christopher is a PhD Candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a Master's degree from the Department of Political Science at Carleton University and a Bachelor's degree from Simon Fraser University.

Research Interests
International Communication; Political Communication; Cultural Studies.

Kelly Fox [top]
Kelly is the Project Co-ordinator for the ACTION for Health project.

Academic and Professional Experience
Kelly comes to the project with a background in laboratory management. She set up and seamlessly operated Dr. Victor Ling’s laboratory, when he moved to Vancouver to head the BC Cancer Research Centre. She also set up and ran the lab at a local, start-up pharmaceutical company. While at the BC Cancer Agency, Kelly co-authored seven peer-reviewed papers, including one with Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Mike Smith.

After years at the BC Cancer Agency, Kelly returned to university to pursue her interest in social sciences, earning her MSc (with Distinction) in Science, Culture and Communication from the University of Bath. She absorbed STS concepts, as well as interests in internet studies, gender issues, and the interface of science and culture.

Kelly’s dissertation, Health issues on the Internet: an analysis of cancer-related websites, explored the range of websites available to the server-advantaged, and considered the ramifications on the doctor-patient relationship. The dissertation drew on Foucauldian concepts, Actor Network Theory, and concepts of social construction in science, technology and medicine.

Course work completed throughout the program included essays entitled: Quantitative and Qualitative analysis of prostate cancer websites, PSA Screening for Prostate Cancer: Issues in Health Communication and Trust, Quantification in social and economic research, Ways of Knowing and Construction of Scientific Knowledge: Discussion of an argument of Evelyn Fox Keller in relation to works by Bruno Latour and Lewis Wolpert.

Presentations included Breast Cancer on the Web: Links of Recognition, Discourses of Empowerment, and Cloning and Culture. Portfolios were Breast Cancer: Internet Debate-scaping, Website Discourse Analysis, and Empowerment Implications, and Cloning and Culture. A research methods course required the submission of a mock grant application, Quantitative and Qualitative exploration of British men’s attitudes to PSA screening.

Kelly’s first degree in Microbiology and Immunology was from McGill University, where, in an honours independent study course, she cloned, biologically characterized and partially purified gene products responsible for the transposition of Bacteriophage Mu. Coincidentally, she was working on the project in the same year Dr. Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of the mobile genetic elements involved in transposition.

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Elaine Gibson [top]
Elaine is an Integration Team Member and Co-investigator in ACTION for Health's Theme III, Ethical and Legal issues. Her research is concerned with the legal issues arising from the provision of health information online, the transmission of health information over the internet and other networks, and the use of health information technologies in the workplace.

Academic and Professional Experience
Elaine Gibson is an Associate Professor of Law at Dalhousie Law School and Associate Director of the Health Law Institute at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is a member of the bars of Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.

Elaine has published in the areas of privacy and tort. Her most recent articles include "Clinical Practice Guidelines: Their Influence on the Standard of Care in Malpractice" (Vol 4 No. 1 2004 Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice 96); Dentists and the Law: Privacy and Confidentiality Issues" in J. Downie, W.A. MacInnis and K. McEwen, eds, Dental Law in Canada (Toronto: Butterworths, 2004) 251; "Is There a Privacy Interest in Anonymised Personal Health Information?" (2003) Health Law Journal 97; "Jewel in the Crown? The Romanow Commission Proposal to Develop a National Electronic Health Record System" (2003) 66 Saskatchewan Law Review 647; and "Patient Privacy and Confidentiality Issues", in Neil J. MacKinnon, ed., Seamless Care: A Pharmacist's Guide to Implementing and Evaluating Programs (Ottawa: Canadian Pharmacists Association, 2003) 99.

Research Interests
Health Law; Privacy; Tort Law.

Michelle Glen [top]
Michelle is a Co-Op student working as a Research Assistant at the ACTION for Health Project. She is currently completing her BA in Political Science and Women's Studies at SFU.

Eileen Green [top]
Eileen Green is a Co-investigator on the Theme I sub-project, Health Technologies, Probability and Health Literacy.

Academic and Professional Work
Eileen is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Teesside in the UK. She is also a founding member of the Centre for Social and Policy Research (CSPR), where she has been Director since 1997.

Eileen is recognized internationally for her publications in the areas of women, work and leisure, gender and information technology. She has also managed a broad range of externally funded research and consultancy projects. Recent publications include: Through the Wardrobe: Women, Identity and their Relationship with Clothes (co-edited Berg, 2001), and Virtual Gender: Technology, Consumption and Identity (co-edited Routledge, 2001). Eileen was Chair of the UK Leisure Studies Association from 1998-2001 and Managing Editor of the Journal Leisure Studies from 2000-03.

She is an international expert member of the programme committee of Society and the Electronic Highway, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and was Co-ordinator of the ESRC Research Seminar Series: Equal Opportunities on Line 2001-3. She is an elected Academician of the Learned Societies for the Social Sciences and was appointed a Visiting Professor at University of Warwick Medical School in 2003.

Research Interests
Eileen's research interests include gender, health and well-being, social in/exclusion, analysis of gender and leisure, and gender and IT. Current projects include action research on widening participation for women in the labour market and enhancing opportunities for Black and minority ethnic women's health and well-being via community based initiatives which include the use of ICTs for empowerment.

Frances Griffiths [top]
Frances Griffiths is a Co-investigator in ACTION for Health's Theme I, Lay-user Issues

Academic and Professional Experience
Frances is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Primary Health Care and a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK.

Frances is trained in medicine at Cambridge and Kings College Hospital, London. She undertook her vocational training in North East England and worked as a GP in Stockton-on-Tees. She completed her PhD in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Durham and was a founding member of the Northern Primary Research Network (NoReN).

For five years she was Director of Warwick-West Midlands Primary Care Research and the Coventry and Warwickshire GP Research Consortium, where she developed the infrastructure to support major programmes of primary care related research. Her personal research centred on lay health beliefs and the impact of health technology.

In 2003 she was awarded a Department of Health National Primary Care Career Scientist Award to develop a research programme on Complexity and Health Care. The programme aims to develop innovative research for developing the evidence base of primary care, informed by ideas of complexity sciences. The programme draws on experience in both social sciences and clinical sciences, integrating understanding from diverse levels of analysis including the political, social, cultural, family, individual and biological. The research programme includes understanding how lay use of digital communication technology, including the internet, impacts how individuals perceive their health.

Frances coordinates the national Complexity in Primary Care Group. She is also a member and former Vice Chair of the European General Practice Research Network (EGRN). She has given invited lectures in more than six European countries and undertaken collaborative research in Europe and North America.

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Roma Harris [top]
Roma Harris is a Theme I Co-lead and a Co-investigator on two sub-projects, Rural Women's Health Information Seeking: Matching e-health initiatives with consumer realities and HIV/AIDs Treatment Information Networks Study.

Academic and Professional Experience
Roma is a Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, as well as the Vice-Provost (Academic Programs and Students) and Registrar at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.

Research Interests
Roma research has focused on gender relations and technological change in the construction, perception and valuing of information work, especially librarianship. She is interested in the restructuring of libraries and library work, the representation of women and women workers in IT advertising, and how perceptions of occupations in the information sector are related to the presence of female workers. She is also interested in help- and information-seeking, especially on the part of abused women, and how informal and formal help systems, including libraries, 'fit' or map the realities of how people seek information and help.

In addition to a number of articles on these subjects, Roma has published three books: Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman's Profession (Ablex, 1992), Barriers to Information: How Formal Help Systems Fail Battered Women (Greenwood, 1994) with Patricia Dewdney, and, Citizenship and Participation in the Information Age (Garamond, 2002) co-edited with Manjunath Pendakur. She has recently become interested in consumer health information, particularly how the information-seeking patterns of rural women match the expectations of e-health providers and the development of policy involving Canada's health 'info-structure.

Much of what Roma understands about these topics has been learned from thoughtful women in the community who she has come to know through her involvement as a board member with local service agencies, including the London Abused Women's Centre (formerly, the Battered Women's Advocacy Clinic), London Second Stage Housing (now part of the Women's Community House), Family Service London, the United Way of London and Middlesex, and the Sexual Assault Centre of London.

Flis Henwood [top]
Flis Henwood is a Co-investigator, working in the UK and Europe, in areas related to the organisational aspects of ICTs in health care and the consumption of online health information.

Academic and Professional Experience
Flis is a Reader at the Social Informatics Research Unit in the School of Computing, Mathematical and Information Sciences at the University of Brighton. Until 2001, she was a senior lecturer in the Department of Innovation Studies at the University of East London.

Flis has published and presented widely on issues of information technology in the health sector, as well as technology and gender relations. She recently led an Economic and Social Research Council/Medical Research Council project, Presenting and Interpreting Health Risks and Benefits: The Role of the Internet and was a co-applicant on the project, The Use of Electronic Records in the Maternity Services: Professional and Public Acceptability.

Flis received her Doctorate of Philosophy from the Social Implications of Technical Change program at the University of Sussex in 1992.

Research Interests
Gender and technology relations; ICTs and health care.

Bev Holmes [top]
Bev is a Doctoral Candidate who worked with Gunther Krueger and Ellen Balka on a sub-project examining the role of the internet in lay user consumption of cancer-related information from 2004 to 2006.

Academic and Professional Experience; Research Interests
She joined the SFU Assessment of Technology in Context Design Lab (ATIC-DL) in September 2003 at the same time as starting her first year in the Master's program at SFU's School of Communication. Having worked as a writer and communications consultant in BC's health care sector for 12 years, Bev is generally interested in the production, dissemination and use of health information.

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Alejandro Jadad [top]
Alejandro Jadad is a Collaborator on the ACTION for Health project.

Academic and Professional Experience
Alex is the Director of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University Health Network and the University of Toronto.He is also a professor in the Departments of Anaesthesia, and Health Policy Management and Evaluation, as well as a Senior Scientist in the Division of Clinical Decision-Making and Health Care at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute.

Alex is Co-Chair of the eUICC, a global think tank supported by the International Union Against Cancer, to promote optimal management of cancer, worldwide. He is also a member of the National Health Reports Expert Group, Canadian Institute for Health Information; and of the Board of Directors of the Change Foundation in Ontario.

In 1998 and 1999, he was one of the external advisors to the US Department of Health and Human Services' Scientific Panel on Interactive Communications in Health Care. From 1996 to 2000, he was Editor of the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group and was one of the Editors of the Empirical Methodological Studies Review Group.

He holds a Canadian Research Chair in eHealth Innovation and a Rose Family Chair in Supportive Care.

Research Interests
His research interests include eHealth innovation; supportive and palliative care; evidence-based decision-making; the role of the public in research; the relationship between the public and the health system in the information age; and eLearning.

Casper Bruun Jensen [top]
Casper completed his post-doctoral fellowship working with Ellen Balka on Theme II issues relating to work-practice studies, database ethnography, standardization and constructive technology assessment.

Academic and Professional Experience
Casper received his Ph.D. in 2004 from the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, for his thesis entitled, Experimental Devices: Studies in STS and Electronic Patient Records - an exploration of the envisioning, development and implementation of Danish electronic patient records. He has recent publications in Information Technology and People, Methods of Information in Medicine, and Social Studies of Science.

Research Interests
Science and technology studies (STS), cultural studies, social theory, cultural anthropology, post-structuralism, with special interest in the relationships between theory, practice, and intervention.

Larry Jung [top]
Larry was the Project Co-ordinator for the ACTION for Health Project from January 2004 to July 2005.

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Norm Kaethler [top]
Norm is Assistant to the ACTION for Health Co-investigator, Allan Best. He has a research and advocacy background in pesticides and environmental health.

Nicki Kahnamoui [top]
Nicki collaborated with Principal Investigator Ellen Balka on the Theme I sub-project, Mid-Main Meets EPR: An ethnography of implementation of the Electronic Patient Record at Mid-main Community Clinic.

Academic and Professional Experience
Nicki holds a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Bachelor's in Business Administration, both from SFU. Prior to becoming a graduate student, Nicki worked as a Business Analyst and Consultant on various information-technology-design and implementation projects in Canada and the United States. She was a member of the SFU Assessment of Technology In Context Design Lab (ATIC-DL) between 2003 and 2005.

Research Interests
Nicki is interested in the impact of management and organizational level practices on women's work, and how the design and implementation of new technologies changes women's work. Her master's thesis examines how the outsourcing of health care services impacts workers' ability to deliver patient care.

Melanie Klingbeil [top]
Melanie Klingbeil is a Master's candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, and her role at ACTION is Communications Officer. Melanie holds a Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English from University of Alberta. Previously, she worked as an Editor for a financial education website, and she also works as Online Facilitator for Athabasca University.

Research Interests
Melanie's research interests include philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, and post-structuralism, particularly theorizing the role of user agency in the interaction between technology and society.

Judith Krajnak [top]
Judith Krajnak is a Post-doctoral Fellow working with Co-investigator Irv Rootman on the Theme I
sub-project, Survey of Users of One Government-Sponsored Health Information Web-Site.

Academic and Professional Experience
Judith completed her B.A. in Psychology and B.S. in Marketing at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania. She worked as a Research Analyst at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, DC before completing her Master's in Community Planning at the University of Maryland in College Park. She completed her Ph.D. studies in Community Health with a specialization in Health Policy at the University of Illinois, Champaign in 2002. Her dissertation focused on how Illinois state legislators make decisions regarding women's health issues. While completing her doctorate, she served as Director of Market Research at Biotext, a health care research company, and as the Director of Research and Evaluation at The Art Institute of Chicago, in addition to independent consulting work in the arts and education field.

Judith recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation in Vancouver, BC. She participated in the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Training Grant - Partnerships for Community Health Research from 2002 - 2004. In addition, she has served as Project Director for an evaluation of the BC HealthGuide program, a province-wide self-care program.

Research Interests
Her main research focuses on knowledge translation issues related to community and population health matters. She is interested in the information-seeking patterns of consumers and patients, specifically how they make decisions relating to their health, as well as to the health of their family members. She is also interested in carrying out applied studies to enable academic research to better serve the information needs of policy makers at various levels of government.

Guenther Krueger [top]
Guenther is working with one of ACTION for Health's community partners, the BC Cancer Agency. He is examining issues regarding delivery of information and support to cancer patients using technology, particularly on-line services. A later project may involve the Vancouver Public Library, examining areas of on-line health care content, human and technological intermediaries, and health information trajectories.

Academic and Professional Work
Guenther is a special arrangements (interdisciplinary) doctoral student at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada. Dr Ellen Balka is his senior supervisor. He is also a member of the SFU Assessment of Technology in Context Design Lab (ATIC-DL).

Guenther has recently returned to an academic environment after a long period of medical writing. His background is in nursing, counselling psychology, and social science issues within a health care context. His degrees are in nursing, counselling psychology and liberal studies.

Research Interests
Guenther's primary interests are in on-line and face-to-face support networks, grief and recovery issues, family and psychological themes pertaining to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Craig Kuziemsky [top]
Craig is a Lead Investigator, with Co-investigator Francis Lau, on the project, A study of the impacts of technology on palliative care delivery. He is providing an analysis of how information systems (IS) impact palliative care delivery. His analysis consists of two parts.

First, he is doing a retrospective study that looks at why a previous attempt at incorporating IS into palliative care was not successful. The second part of his analysis is being done alongside his doctoral thesis research. He is working in partnership with Victoria Hospice Society to develop a computer-based severe pain management tool.

Academic and Professional Experience
Craig is a PhD candidate in the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC. He is currently involved in a number of projects in palliative care such as developing common data models to facilitate data collection, as well a analyzing and designing IS based symptoms management tools.

He was involved, from 2002-2003, in a multi-site initiative across Canada to develop a common palliative data set (PDS). The PDS is intended to promote common understanding and meaning to palliative data to allow multi-site comparison. He has also been applying grounded theory methodology as a means of understanding and contextualizing end user needs for ontology and information systems design.

Craig has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree with Distinction, as well as a Bachelor of Science inMedical Laboratory Science, from the University of Alberta.

Research Interests
His main research interests are the development of ontologies and problem solving methods as a means of developing of IS artifacts.

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Francis Yin Yee Lau [top]
Francis Lau is a Co-investigator on the sub-project, A study of the impacts of technology on palliative care delivery.

Academic and Professional Experience
Francis is an Associate Professor at the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC. He is the Principal Investigator on several research initiatives, including A collaborative health informatics research training program, funded through the Canadian Institute for Health Research and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and Overcoming communication barriers in end-of-life and palliative transitions, funded through the CIHR New Emerging Teams in End-of-Life and Palliative Care Initiative.

Francis has a PhD in medical sciences specialized in health informatics, where he focused in the design, implementation and evaluation of health information systems. He also has 14 years of professional experience in the health IT industry and a diverse background in business administration, as well as computing and medical sciences.

Research Interests
His research interests include action research, knowledge management and translation, e-learning and collaborative technologies, large-scale health systems research, and cancer and palliative care informatics.

Kate Laxer [top]
Kate is a research assistant working with Co-investigator Pat Armstrong on Theme II sub-projects.

Gael Le Jeune [top]
Gael is a Post-Doctoral Fellow working with Co-investigator Karen Messing on the Theme II sub-project, The Social and Technological Life of an Indicator: Indicators that include women's occupational health.

Academic and Professional Experience
Gael received her PhD in 2004 from the Department of Demography at the University of Montreal. Her thesis, " Les migrations féminines du milieu rural vers le milieu urbain au Burkina Faso: faits, causes et implications " ("The female migrations from rural to urban areas in Burkina Faso: facts, causes and implications"), is concerned with women’s work both in the home and in the labour force, with a focus on the emergence of automonous female migrations undertaken to achieve individual economic goals in Burkina Faso. Gael’s research reflects her interest in the transformation of women's work in West Africa and Canada.

The link between her ACTION for Health sub-project and her thesis research is twofold: not only are both studies concerned with the invisibility of women's work and the underestimation of women's work as a determinant of demographic behaviours, additionally, they also make use of quantitative and qualitative data for an increased understanding of women's work and its consequences.

Research Interests
Gael’s research interests include women's work in the home and in the labour force, women agency and women's occupational health.

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Casey McCarthy [top]
Casey McCarthy is an Assistant to the ACTION for Health Principal Investigator, Ellen Balka. She is currently an undergraduate at SFU, working towards a BA in Communication and English.

Anne McCulloch [top]
Anne McCulloch is an MA candidate working with Principal Investigator Ellen Balka on various Theme I sub-projects. She joined the SFU Assessment of Technology in Context Design Lab (ATIC-DL) as a research assistant in the fall of 2005.

Academic and Professional Experience
Anne holds a combined Honours Bachelor of Journalism degree in Journalism and Political Science from Carleton University. She is currently enrolled in the MA program in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Previously, she worked as a research assistant in strategic directions for Alberta Health and Wellness. She also worked as a communications assistant for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria, where she wrote a newsletter for media and donors about the institute’s research and learned about communicating to farmers via extension workers, resource centres, internet and radio. She also worked as a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen and Calgary Herald newspapers.

Research Interests
Science and technology studies, literacy and health, and production, dissemination and use of health information are areas of research interest for Anne.

Gary McDonald [top]
Gary McDonald is a Research Assistant working with Co-investigator Leslie Bella.

Karen Messing [top]
Karen is a Co-investigator on the sub-project, The Social and Technological Life of an Indicator: Indicators that include women's occupational health. She will be collaborating with Pat and Hugh Armstrong on an attempt to develop indicators of occupational health adequate for women's work, so that they can be used to follow the impact of new technologies. She will also continue to collaborate with Ellen Balka on developing methods to assess the impact of new technologies on the work process in the health care sector.

Academic and Professional Experience
Karen Messing is an ergonomist and full professor in the Département des Sciences Biologiques of Université du Québec à Montréal. She was co-founder and first director of CINBIOSE, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre in Early Detection and Intervention for the Prevention of Work and Environment Related Illness. She also co-directs the research group l'Invisible qui fait mal, a partnership with three Québec unions oriented towards improvement of women's occupational health.

Karen is the author of numerous articles and of the book, One-eyed Science: Occupational Health and Working Women (Temple, 1998), as well as the editor of Integrating Gender in Ergonomic Analysis (1999, translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Greek) and published by the Trade Union Technical Bureau of the European Trade Union Confederation. She is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Health Services; Women and Health; Recherches Féministes; Policy and Practice in Health and Safety; and Salud de los trabajadores.

Research Interests
Her current research focuses on the effects of prolonged standing among workers in the service sector, studies of constraints on those who work with other people, and on application of gender-sensitive analysis in occupational health.

Karen Messing est ergonome et professeure titulaire au Département des Sciences Biologiques de l'Université du Québec à Montréal, où elle dirige le CINBIOSE, un centre de recherche interdisciplinaire en santé environnementale et en santé au travail. Le CINBIOSE est un centre collaborateur OMS-OPS dans le domaine de la détection précoce et l'intervention en vue de la prévention des maladies d'origine environnemental ou professionnel. Karen co-dirige l'équipe l'Invisible qui fait mal, un partenariat avec trois centrales syndicales qui œuvre pour l'amélioration de la santé des travailleuses.

Elle est l'auteure de nombreux articles et de La santé des travailleuses : la science est-elle aveugle? (Éditions du remue-ménage et Octares, 2000) et a dirigé Comprendre le travail des femmes pour le transformer (1999, traduit en anglais, portugais, italien, espagnol et grec). Elle est membre du comité éditorial de International Journal of Health Services; Women and Health; Recherches Féministes; Policy and Practice in Health and Safety; et Salud de los trabajadores.

Valerie Mitchelmore [top]
Valerie is a Master's Candidate working with Dr. Leslie Bella on the Theme I sub-project, Use of the Internet by Small Community Based Health Organizations: Towards Increased Capacity Development.

Professional and Academic Experience
Valerie is a Master's of Social Work student who completed her Bachelor of Social Work Degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1989. Since that time, she has practiced primarily in the field of Mental Health and Addictions.

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Anne-Marie Nicol [top]
Anne-Marie is a Post-Doctoral Fellow collaborating with Principal Investigator Ellen Balka on various sub-projects for Theme I, Lay User Issues. Her contributions to ACTION for Health include an extensive literature review of recent works on online health-information-seeking behaviour of patients, as well as involvement with the Vancouver Public Library Health-Information-Seeking Survey and the Farsi BC HealthGuide mass media project.

Professional and Academic Experience
Anne-Marie holds degrees in Medicine (Ph. D., Epidemiology, University of British Columbia), Environmental Studies (M.E.S., York University) and Communication (B.A., Simon Fraser University). She teaches courses in Human Health Risk Assessment and Risk Communication at both UBC and the University of Victoria.

Research Interests
Research methodologies, health communication, and occupational and environmental health risks are areas of research interest for Anne-Marie.

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Stephanie Premji [top]
Stephanie is a Ph. D. Candidate working with Co-investigator Karen Messing on projects for Theme II: Health Practitioner Issues.

Academic and Professional Experience
As holder of a FQRSC doctoral scholarship, Stephanie is presently working on her doctorate in Environmental Sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), under the direction of Karen Messing and Katherine Lippel. Her thesis focuses on the relation between ethnicity and exposure to occupational hazards, which she studies using both qualitative and quantitative methods. An article that Stephanie has written on women's occupational health was published in the Médecin du Québec (2002, vol. 37 no.8); she has presented her work at the Congrès de l'ACFAS in both 2003 and 2004. Since 1999, Stephanie has been working within the Centre for the Study of Biological Interactions in Human Health (CINBIOSE).

Stephanie has a MSc in Environmental Sciences from UQAM (2003), and a Bachelor's degree in Human Geography and Anthropology from Concordia University (1998).

Research Interests
Her research focuses on occupational and environmental health, social inequalities in health and ethnicity.

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Christine Reidl [top]
Christine is working with Co-investigator Ina Wagner on the Theme III sub-project, An Ethical Analysis of Issues Arising with Increased Use of Technology in the Health Sector.

Academic and Professional Experience
Christine holds a Master's of Sociology from the University of Vienna. Her professional experience includes working as a researcher in projects on public health, health care and education. Recently, she was involved in a model project on patient-oriented integrated care (www.pik-wien.at/) and in a study analyzing 30 years of Viennese Drug-Policy. She is also teaching as a lecturer at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.

Research Interests
Her research interests include health care in the information age, health communication, health policy, and addiction research.

Alison Robb [top]
Alison joined the ACTION for Health Project in the fall of 2004 as a Communications Officer.

Kjetil Rodje [top]
Kjetil Rodje is a PhD Candidate working as a Research Assistant on Theme II sub-projects on the ACTION for Health Project.

Academic and Professional Experience
Kjetil holds a Master’s degree in Sociology, from the University of Oslo, Norway. Currently, he is enrolled in the PhD program at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.

Perviously, Kjetil has worked as a research assistant at The Norwegian Institute of Public Health, The Norwegian Knowledge Center for the Health Services and the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIK) at the University of Oslo. In addition, he was a lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Communication at the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Research Interests
Kjetil’s academic field of interest includes Post-structuralism, Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Of special interest is research concerning subjectivity, power, and materiality, especially in relation to issues concerning health practices.

Irving Rootman [top]
Irving Rootman is a Co-investigator on two sub-projects, Analysis of Government-Sponsored Health Information Web Sites and A Survey of Users of One Government-Sponsored Health Information Web Sites. He is also a Co-Lead for Theme I: Lay User Issues.

Academic and Professional Experience
Dr. Rootman is currently a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Distinguished Scholar and Professor in the Faculty of Human and Social Development at the University of Victoria.

From 1990-2001, he was the first Director of the Centre for Health Promotion at the University of Toronto, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre, and a Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences. From 1973-1990, he was a researcher, research manager, and program manager for Health and Welfare Canada. He has also been a technical advisor, consultant and senior scientist for the World Health Organization.

He is currently a member of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Advisory Board and was a member of the Health Literacy Committee of the U.S. Institute of Medicine. He is also a member of the Board of the Public Health Association of British Columbia and Chair of the Board of the B.C. Centre for Addictions Research. He is a former member of the Canadian Minister of Health's Science Advisory Board as well as the Board of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education.

Dr. Rootman has published widely in the health promotion and drug abuse fields. His most recent book is Health Promotion Evaluation published by the European Office of the World Health Organization. He received the R.F. Defries Award, the highest award of the Canadian Public Health Association, in October 2001.

Dr. Rootman received his Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University in 1970.

Research Interests
His two main areas of research interest are literacy and health and school health. His areas of expertise are: literacy and health; school health; substance abuse; evaluation; and participatory research.

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Teresa Scassa [top]
Teresa Scassa will be conducting research on legal issues arising from the provision of health information online and the transmission of health information over the internet and other networks. Her focus will be on privacy and intellectual property issues.

Academic and Professional Experience
Teresa Scassa is an Associate Professor of Law at Dalhousie Law School and the Associate Director of the Law and Technology Institute at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is also a member of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society.

Teresa is co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology, published by CCH Canadian Ltd, and a co-author of the bi-weekly newsletter of the Canadian Information Technology Law Association (IT.Can). She is the author of numerous articles on topics ranging from intellectual property law to personal information protection. Recent publications include a book co-authored with Michael Deturbide titled Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada, forthcoming in the Fall of 2004, published by CCH Canadian Ltd, and the following articles: "Originality and Utilitarian Works: The Uneasy Relationship between Copyright Law and Unfair Competition", "Intellectual Property in the Digital Age", "A Mouse is a Mouse is a Mouse: A Comment on the Supreme Court of Canada's Decision on the Harvard Mouse Patent", "Intellectual Property on the Cyber-Picketline: A Comment on British Columbia Automobile Assn v. Office and Professional Employees' International Union, Local 378", (2002) 39 Alberta Law Review 934.

Research Interests
She teaches and conducts research in the areas of Intellectual Property Law and Law and Technology.

Lyn Simpson [top]
Lyn Simpson is a Co-investigator, along with Leanne Wood, on the sub-project, Partnering with Natural Helpers to Deliver Health Information in Rural, Regional and Remote Australia.

Gloria Sin [top]
Gloria was a Communication Designer (print and web) and Research Assistant for the ACTION for Health project between May 2004 and January 2006.

Academic and Professional Experience
Gloria is an Honours Candidate in the School of Communication with minors in English and Publishing at Simon Fraser University. Entitled eLearning with Learning Management Systems at SFU: The Student Experience, her thesis takes a qualitative approach to studying the impact of learning with technologies from the perspective of undergraduate students. In addition to her academic work, she also serves as an Editorial Assistant at Dance International magazine, as well as a board member at both the Vancouver Ballet Society and the Vancouver Academy of Dance Society.

Previously, Gloria was a web designer at BC Hydro, a research assistant at the New Media and Innovation Centre (NewMIC), and a media relations assistant at such local events as the 2001 World Figure Skating Championships and the Out On Screen Film Festival.

Research Interests
Participatory design ; science and technology studies; principles of design and typography; Asian-Canadian literature; dance history.

Karen Smith [top]
Karen is a Master's Candidate working with Principal Investigator Ellen Balka; she joined the ACTION for Health team and the SFU Assessment of Technology in Context Design Lab (ATIC-DL) as a Research Assistant in the Fall of 2004.

Academic and Professional Experience
Karen is currently enrolled in the M.A. program in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Previously, she worked as a Netcorps Intern in the Philippines with a non-governmental organization, where she assisted with media outreach activities to address HIV/AIDS and other issues impacting migrant workers. She also has considerable website content management experience having worked for a major online banking website.

Karen holds a combined Honours B.A. in Multimedia and Women's Studies from McMaster University.

Research Interests
Research that explores issues such as usability, gender and web-based media within the health sector are of particular interest to Karen.

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Marianne Tolar [top]
Marianne is working with Co-investigator Ina Wagner on the Theme II sub-project, Technology and Work Practice in an Austrian Hospital.

Academic and Professional Experience
She is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for Design & Assessment of Technology at Vienna University of Technology (VUT); her thesis is concerned with the use of video-conferencing in higher education. Marianne holds a Master's of Computer Science from VUT, as well as a diploma of post-graduate programme in Sociology from the Institute for Advanced Studies.

Marianne's professional experience includes working as a researcher in projects on tele-work, public electronic spaces and education. Recently, she was involved in the Widening Women's Work in Information and Communication Technology project (EU research project IST 2001-34520 WWW-ICT).

Research Interests
Marianne's research interests focus on qualitative methods of investigating the sociological impact of information technology on education and work.

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Tiffany Veinot [top]
Tiffany Veinot is a Graduate Research Assistant working with Co-investigator Roma Harris on the Theme I sub-project, Rural HIV/AIDS Treatment Infomration Networks Study.

Academic and Professional Experience
Tiffany is a PhD student in Library & Information Science at the University of Western Ontario. Before beginning her PhD, she worked as Director of Information Services at the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE) for almost 4 years and as Coordinator of Information Services at Education Wife Assault for 6 years. She is also a Co-investigator in a research study, The Positive Youth Project, in partnership with the Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, CATIE and Positive Youth Outreach.

Research Interests
Tiffany's research interests are HIV/AIDS treatment information exchange, patient empowerment, community capacity development, Internet technologies, and health promotion with youth.

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Ina Wagner [top]
Ina Wagner is a Co-lead on Themes II and III as well as a Co-Investigator on several sub-projects.

Academic and Professional Experience
Ina Wagner is Head of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Design at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, where she is also a professor of Multidisciplinary Systems Design and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW.)

She has edited and written numerous books and authored over 100 papers on a variety of technology-related issues, amongst them a feminist perspective in science and technology, ethical and political issues in systems design, computer-support of hospital work and of architectural design and planning, CSCW and networking, telecommuting as a social practice. At the core of her approach to the design of IT systems are ethnographic studies of work, with the aim of bringing awareness of the social organization of work processes to systems design and human-computer interaction. This also engages sociological interests in work and occupations, organization, management, technology, and gender.

A focus of her research is the implications of information technology for the practice and quality of health care (and in particular the work of nurses) within hospitals. She has performed case studies on spatially distributed co-operative work (tele-working) in a variety of companies and settings, and, recently, on the careers of women in innovative companies in the fields of architecture, multimedia production, and financial services. She was principal contractor in IST-2001-34520 Project WWW-ICT Widening Women's Work in Information and Communication Technology (2002-2004) and subcontractor (for conducting an ethical review) in QLRT-2001-00458 Project Friendly Restrooms for Elderly People (2002-2005).

One of her main current interests focuses on the multi-disciplinary design of computer systems for architectural design and planning. She has been prime contractor (co-ordinator) of ESPRIT LTR Project DESARTE The computer-supported design of artefacts and spaces in architecture: landscape architecture (1998-2001) and is continuing this research within IST-2000 ATELIER Architecture and Technologies for Inspirational Learning Environments (2001-2004). As part of these projects she addresses key issues of the design of mixed media environments.

From 1995 to 1997 she was Chair of the Equal Opportunity Commission of the Austrian Ministry of Science, Research, and Culture. From 1997 to 2000 she was a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies. She is currently a member of the Austrian Bioethics Committee.

Ina holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Vienna.

Renee Walsh [top]
Renee Walsh is a Master's Candidate working with Co-investigator, Leslie Bella.

Nadine Wathen [top]
Nadine Wathen, PhD, is a Collaborator on the ACTION for Health project. She is working with Co-investigator, Roma Harris, on two sub-projects, HIV/AIDs Treatment Information Networks Study and Rural Women's Health Information Seeking: Matching e-health initiatives with consumer realities.

Academic and Professional Experience
Nadine is a CIHR Institute for Gender and Health: Ontario Women's Health Council Research Fellow at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario.

Her current projects include an examination of how women experiencing intimate partner violence use information provided in health care settings when deciding to disclose abuse and seek help; and how women living in rural areas seek and use health-related information for themselves and their families. Nadine also has expertise in systematic evidence review methods and research knowledge translation and transfer to health providers, policy-makers and the public.

Research Interests
Nadine's research focuses on health decision-making, particularly among women, and on finding ways to optimize traditional and new media to allow women to make decisions to improve their health and well-being.

Leanne Wood [top]
Leanne Wood is a Co-investigator, with Lyn Simpson, on a series of three projects in rural Queensland, working closely with marginalized community members to determine creative, low-cost strategies to build individual and community capacity via internet training and use. The projects focus on:

• Developing a process for networking marginalized individuals and groups that addresses needs beyond those met by traditional forms of training
• Establishing innovative community partnerships and networks to facilitate the access of not-for-profit community-based organisations to government and community grants
• Using new and established networks to facilitate sharing of resources and employees between organisations and towns to provide employment and to enhance existing facilities and programs available in rural communities

Academic and Professional Experience
Leanne Wood is currently a Senior Project Officer with the Community ICT Unit
In the Queensland Department of Communities. She was recently a senior researcher in the Service Leadership and Innovation Research Programme at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.

In past years, she has been project manager/senior researcher on the major Australian Research Council projects Creating Rural Connections and ACROSSnet. The latest project, ACROSSnet (20021-2004), aims to provide opportunities for rural and remote professional mental health workers, and community professionals who have a professional interest in suicide and suicide prevention, to interact and network through an online support system.

Leanne is currently completing a qualitative PhD exploring the influence of rurality on the business and social networks of rural small businesswomen.

Sally Wyatt [top]
Sally Wyatt is a Co-investigator with the ACTION for Health.

Academic and Professional Experience
Sally has many years of experience teaching and researching in technology studies. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASoCR) at the University of Amsterdam. She is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow with the Department of Science & Technology Studies at the University College London and President of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST.)

Research Interests
Sally's research interests are in the areas of patient information seeking, health and risk, the digital divide, the non-use of the Internet, and the use of metaphors in discussions of the Internet. A common theme in her work is to better understand the relationship between technological and social change, particularly why the emancipatory potential of technology is often not realized. Her current research is concerned with the role of the internet in influencing the ways people construct risks associated with health problems and treatments. This is being done jointly with colleagues at the University of Brighton - Flis Henwood and Angie Hart, and is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under their Innovative Health Technologies Programme.

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