Breakthrough Breakfast: Advancing family medicine through research
January 28, 2025 7:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Family medicine faces critical challenges, including long wait times, a shortage of family doctors, and administrative burdens. These issues impact both patient care and provider well-being.
Research is highlighting the needs of unattached patients and vulnerable populations, as well as paving the way for innovative solutions that improve doctors' workflow and promote equity and accessibility for patients.
Hosted by Dr. David Anderson, Dean of Medicine, Improving Family Medicine through Research will explore how research at the Faculty of Medicine is addressing these barriers, ensuring more accessible, effective, and sustainable primary care for all.
Meet Our Speakers:
Dr. Emily Gard Marshall is a Professor in the Dalhousie Department of Family Medicine Primary Care Research Unit, cross-appointed with Community Health and Epidemiology, Psychiatry. She is also a Nova Scotia Health Affiliated Scientist, and Director of the BRIC-Nova Scotia Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Primary Health Care Network.
Dr. Marshall's mixed methods research examines primary healthcare from patient, provider, and system perspectives. Her focus includes access, continuity, and comprehensiveness to improve equity and optimize outcomes across the life course, involving population data and equity-deserving populations. She leads multiple pan-Canadian studies.
Dr. Marshall was the 2020 recipient of the NAPCRG Mid-Career Researcher Award.
Dr. Mathew Grandy grew up in Fall River, Nova Scotia and graduated from Dalhousie Family Medicine in 2012. He has been practising clinically at Dal Family Medicine in Spryfield since 2014 and is also the Network Director for the Maritime Family Practice Research Network (MaRNet-FP).
His research in primary care focuses on quantitative use of de-identified EMR data, drug prescribing and medication utilization, chronic disease, and AI implementation in primary care.
Dr. Ruth Lavergne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Dalhousie University and a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Primary Care.
Dr. Lavergne's research addresses disparities in access to care and builds evidence to make sure our primary care organization, delivery, and workforce meet the needs of the people in Canada, now and in the future.
Her current work examines factors shaping changing primary care supply and population needs, as well as how policy choices, such as payment reform and virtual care, shape equity in access to primary care.
Dr. Kevin Pottie is a Distinguished Professor and Research Chair in Family Medicine at Dalhousie University. His research covers health equity and digital transformation.
Dr. Pottie's systematic reviews and clinical guidelines are transforming primary care clinical approaches to refugee and migrant health, homeless populations, and 'deprescribing' for the elderly.
His influential evidence-based refugee health contributions extend to leading roles in organizations like Cochrane Health Equity Thematic Group, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care and collaborations with IOM and WHO Geneva.
