Roberta de Carvalho Corôa, Québec, Canada
Sociologist, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher at Canada Research Chair in Shared Decision Making and Knowledge Mobilization, Université Laval
Dr. Roberta de Carvalho Corôa was born in Brazil and earned her PhD in sociology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Since 2010, she has been working as a research collaborator at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the largest public health institution in Latin America. In 2021, she began her postdoctoral fellowship at the Canada Research Chair in Shared Decision Making and Knowledge Mobilization at Université Laval. She has since been working on implementation science with the goal of demonstrating and scaling the impact of interventions that can enhance people’s experiences with healthcare systems. She is particularly interested in patient-centered approaches in research. It is crucial for her to bring a sociological perspective, representing Global South knowledge, to the field of public health. Her ongoing projects aim to identify effective strategies for involving patients and the public in scaling health and social services, as well as to develop scalable patient decision aids for vulnerable women in Brazil and Canada.
Sir Andy Haines, United Kingdom
Professor Sir Andy Haines F MedSci
Professor of Environmental Change and Public Health,
Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health,
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Andy Haines was initially trained as a family doctor and was Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL between 1987-2000, on part-time secondment as Director, Research & Development, NHS Executive, North Thames between 1994-96. He was Director (formerly Dean) of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine between 2001 and October 2010 and was knighted in 2005 for services to medicine. He developed an interest in climate change and health in the 1990’s. He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2nd and 3rd assessment exercises and review editor for the health chapter in the 5th assessment. He chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report, the Rockefeller/Lancet Commission on Planetary Health (2014-15) and the European Academies Science Advisory Council working group on climate change and health (2018-19). He also co-chaired the InterAcademy Partnership (140 science academies worldwide) working group on climate change and health and is currently co-chairing the Lancet Pathfinder Commission on health in the zero-carbon economy. He has published many papers on topics such as randomised trials in primary care, the effects of environmental change on health and the health co-benefits of low carbon policies. He was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2022.
Danielle Muscat , Sydney, Australia
Senior Research Fellow, Sydney Health Literacy Lab
Dr Danielle Muscat is a Senior Research Fellow in the Sydney Health Literacy Lab at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on the co-design and evaluation of interventions to improve health literacy and support shared decision-making among socially disadvantaged groups. During and since her PhD, she has led the development of innovative shared decision making and health literacy programs with and for adult learners, new parents, and people living with chronic kidney disease (CKD), delivered in clinical and community settings. Through this work, she has examined the critical intersections between health literacy and shared decision making.
Dr Muscat’s work is enabled through her role as the Director of Research at the Health Literacy Hub; a centre for health literacy research translation and collaboration with a growing community of practice of >1500 patient partners and health staff. She won the Institute for Healthcare Advancement’s International Health Literacy Award in 2022 and is in the top 1% of scholars writing about health literacy over the past 10 years.
Amy Price, Florida, USA
Senior Research Scientist Anesthesia Informatics and Media Lab
Co-Instructor Partnering with Patients EdX Online Series
Research Scientist, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (Starting December 2023)
Dr Amy Price earned her doctorate in Evidence Based Healthcare with The University of Oxford after enduring significant injury and extensive rehabilitation. She emerged with a mission to bridge research methodology, research involvement, and public engagement. Dr. Price advocates for the empowerment of the public as equal partners in health research, believing that shared knowledge and evidence-based research will shape the future. She serves as a BMJ Research Editor (Patient and Public Partnership) and a Senior Research Scientist with Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Price’s expertise lies in building connections between interdisciplinary research collaboration, shared decision making, and patient-centered care to shape transformative healthcare practices. She is interested in mentoring and the triangulation of empathy and co-production in the environment. Her research explores the intersection of coproduction in healthcare, shared decision making, and the integration of patient-reported outcomes.
Isabelle Scholl, Germany
Prof. Dr. phil. Isabelle Scholl, Dipl.-Psych
Isabelle Scholl is Professor of Psycho-Oncology and Patient-Centered Medicine and Deputy Director at the Department of Medical Psychology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).She currently oversees two research groups, one focusing on shared decision making (SDM) and patient-centered care, and one focusing on psycho-oncology. She concluded her PhD on the measurement of SDM and subsequently was the principal investigator of the first SDM implementation trial in German cancer care. With a solid funding track record, numerous publications, and international collaborations, she brings a wealth of experience to the field. Prof. Scholl has held a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice, which she spent at the Dartmouth Institute in 2016/2017, focusing on organizational and system-level determinants of SDM implementation. As a psychologist, licensed psychotherapist and psycho-oncologist, she leads psycho-oncology services with 40+ clinicians at the University Cancer Center Hamburg, a top comprehensive cancer center in Germany. Prof. Scholl has 15 years of teaching experience at the Faculty of Medicine of the UKE, including curriculum development in SDM.
Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher, Michigan, USA
Professor of Health Behavior & Health Education
Research Professor of Internal Medicine
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher, Ph.D. is Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, Research Professor of Internal Medicine, and Interim Co-Director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the journals Medical Decision Making and MDM Policy & Practice. Trained in decision psychology and behavioral economics, he designs and evaluates methods of making health data more intuitively meaningful to patients, the public, and policymakers alike. He also studies the impact of people’s consistent preferences for more versus less health care on over- and underutilization of care, and explores the power of narratives as a tool for sharing patient experiences. He teaches courses on designing clear and memorable messages to non-scientist audiences and explores the use of improvisational theater games as tools for building health and science communication skills.
Ben Fehnert, The Netherlands
Co-founder of Fora Health Ltd and Ctrl Group Ltd
Ben Fehnert is a user researcher who focuses on inclusive design development. Ben has run global research teams in the UK, DE and JP and has carried out user research across Europe, the US and Asia. Ben co-founded Ctrl Group, a consultancy focused on the design of software as a medical device and through Ctrl Group, Ben has launched several digital health products such as Cognition Kit and Fora Health. In addition, Ben founded Eclipse Experience, which carries out user centered research and supports inclusive humanitarian design with affected local populations in rapid onset and protracted crises. The thread that runs throughout Ben’s work is for people to have a voice in how services for them are designed. A large part of this concerns the opportunity of tech-enabled services to empower and engage people to be part of the decisions that affect them.
William B. Weeks, USA
MD, PhD, MBA
Physician-Economist leading Microsoft’s Philanthropic AI for Health effort
In concert with not-for-profit organizations and academic centers, William B. Weeks, MD, PhD, MBA, conducts research designed to improve health and health outcomes, applying AI in three areas: imaging, public health, and large language modeling.
Dr. Weeks also serves as the Medical Director for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Dr. Weeks has published extensively on the economic and business aspects of health care delivery science, physicians’ return on educational investment, social determinants of health, population health, and healthcare value. He has received multiple national awards for his research efforts.