Esther

Postdoctoral Fellow in population health

Esther is a postdoctoral fellow at the Bruyère Research Institute and her work focuses on three areas: people living with HIV; the maternity health care system; and homelessness. She has worked with a research team that focuses on people living with HIV and AIDS that has had a longstanding history of partnering with community members. This experience has inspired her to build her own research team to include six academic investigators and seven community scholars. Esther was successful in her efforts to obtain project planning funding that allowed her to provide funds to people on her team termed ‘community scholars’. Esther believes it is really important that everyone on the team is treated as an equal partner and is compensated for their time and contributions. Esther hopes that in the future there will be more funds available for patient-oriented projects and that teaching about how to build effective researcher-patient partnerships will be included importantly in post-secondary university health programs. 

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• Challenging Experiences – Esther
  It can be difficult for early career researchers to engage in partnerships given little support or guidance, says Esther
• Relationship building – Esther
  Patient partners in Esther’s projects help determine project outcomes that are meaningful to patients
• Role determination – Esther
  Working with an experienced research team was helpful for Esther in navigating the role determination process
• Motivations – Esther
  Esther learned about how to partner with patients from a colleague with experience