Speakers
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Bev Heim-Myers
[field_institution]Bev Heim-Myers joined the Huntington Society of Canada in 2010 as CEO & Executive Director. Currently Bev is the Chair of the Canadian Coalition for Genetic Fairness, sits on the Governing Council of the Health Charities Coalition Canada and is an active member of both the Neurological Health Charities of Canada (NHCC) and the National Population Health Study of Neurological Conditions (NPHSNC). Bev is also on the Board of the International Huntington Association.
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Vardit Ravitsky
[field_institution]Vardit Ravitsky is assistant professor in the Bioethics Programs at the Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal and Director of the Ethics and Health axis of the Centre de recherche en éthique de l'Université de Montréal (CRÉUM). Previously, she was faculty at the Department of Medical Ethics of the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a Senior Policy Advisor at the Ethics Office of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and prior to that, a consultant to Genome Canada on Ethical, Economic, Environmental, Legal and Social aspects of Genomics Research (GE3LS). Between 2003 and 2005 she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the NIH and at the Social and Behavioral Research Branch (SBRB) of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Her research interests in bioethics include genetics, reproductive technologies, end-of-life, research ethics, health policy, and cultural perspectives. She is particularly interested in the various ways in which cultural frameworks shape public debate and public policy in the area of bioethics.
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Frank Zinatelli
[field_institution]Frank Zinatelli, Vice President and General Counsel, CLHIA, obtained an Honours Bachelor of Arts, in Economics and Political Science, from Wilfrid Laurier University in 1976. He then received his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario in 1979 and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1981.
Following a number of years in private practice, Frank became involved in the area of financial services: first, with a consulting firm; then with a trade association representing consumer loan and sales finance companies; and at present, with the CLHIA, the Canadian trade association for life and health insurance companies. His practice focuses on financial services regulation.
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Gail Ouellette
[field_institution]Gail Ouellette is co-founder and director of the Quebec Coalition of Orphan Diseases (Regroupement québécois des maladies orphelines) and of the Rare Disease Info Portal. She obtained her Ph.D. in molecular genetics at the Université de Montréal. She did her postdoctoral studies in genetic epidemiology at the Centre for Human Genetics in Leuven, Belgium. She was a researcher at Algene Biotechnologies and Signalgene where she worked in gene discovery for compex diseases in founder populations. In 1999, she left the laboratory and the computer to train for a Master’s in Genetic Counselling at McGill University in order to do clinical genetics. She worked as a genetic counsellor at the Centre hospitalier universitaire of Sherbrooke and at Procréa Cliniques in Montreal. Since 2005, she has been involved as a volunteer consultant with various patient organizations in Quebec and Canada. Since 2010, she devotes all of her time to the Regroupement québécois des maladies orphelines (RQMO).
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Tim Caulfield
[field_institution]Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. He is the Research Director of the Health Law Institute and the Health Law and Science Policy Group (HeaLS) at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta. Over the past several years he has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary research endeavours that have allowed him to publish over 250 articles and book chapters. He is a Health Senior Scholar with the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and the Principal Investigator for a number of large interdisciplinary projects that explore the ethical, legal and health policy issues associated with a range of topics, including stem cell research, genetics, patient safety, the prevention of chronic disease, obesity policy, the commercialization of research, complementary and alternative medicine and access to health care. Professor Caulfield is and has been involved with a number of national and international policy and research ethics committees, including Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, Genome Canada’s Science Advisory Committee, the Ethics and Public Policy Committee for the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Federal Panel on Research Ethics. He teaches biotechnology in the Faculty of Law. He also writes frequently for the popular press and is the author of The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin Canada, 2011). Professor Caulfield has won numerous awards for his academic work. In 2007, for example, Professor Caulfield became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is also a member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and has won the University of Alberta's Martha Cook Piper Prize for research excellence and the Alumni Horizon Award. In 2004, he was awarded the university's media relations award in recognition of his work with popular press.