Dr. Monica Bienefeld joins IWH as new director of Knowledge Transfer and Exchange
The Institute for Work & Health (IWH) welcomes Dr. Monica Bienefeld, who joins the executive team in her new role as director of Knowledge Transfer and Exchange (KTE). Bienefeld, also appointed an associate scientist at IWH, is an epidemiologist with more than 15 years of professional experience in public health, most recently with Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and, before that, with Toronto Public Health. Her areas of interest include assessing and communicating the quality of scientific evidence and promoting the use of evidence in population health policy development and decision-making.
Bienefeld steps into a role vacated with the retirement of Dr. Ron Saunders, who joined the Institute in 2008. During his tenure as director of KTE and senior scientist at IWH, Saunders has helped strengthen the integrated KTE model, which provides for multiple types of engagement with stakeholders throughout the course of a research project. He has also played a key role in expanding and deepening IWH’s relationships with its stakeholder networks. These include the employer and labour networks, which he established, and the Prevention Knowledge Exchange Group (PKEG), which he has nurtured into a lively gathering of Ontario’s prevention system representatives to exchange information about research and practice.
Institute’s 2016 Annual Report highlights stories of workplace change
The impact of IWH research on workplaces is the theme of the Institute’s 2016 Annual Report. It features stories of five workplaces that have used IWH research to better their occupational health and safety or return-to-work programming. The annual report also describes IWH research projects conducted in 2016 to support workplace change. It can be downloaded at: www.iwh.on.ca/corporate-reports.
IWH’s plenary series gets a new name in 2018
Starting in 2018, IWH’s plenary series will be named IWH Speaker Series: New and emerging research in work and health. Since 2008, the Institute has hosted the public lecture series where work and health researchers from IWH, across Canada and around the world share findings from a research project. These free hour-long lectures are usually held at 11 a.m. Tuesdays at the Institute (481 University Ave., Toronto, Ontario). People who can’t attend in person can watch the presentation via a live stream. A schedule of upcoming presentations can be viewed at: www.iwh.on.ca/events.