Dr. Geoffrey Nguyen Sinai Health System (Ontario) Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Dr. Geoffrey Nguyen Sinai Health System (Ontario) Dr. Nguyen, MD, PhD, FRCPC, is a Professor of Medicine and Clinician Scientist based at Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto) whose clinical and research focus is healthcare delivery in inflammatory bowel disease, especially among vulnerable populations such as the elderly, transitioning pediatric IBD patients and pregnant women with IBD. He completed his medical training, fellowship, and PhD in clinical investigation at Johns Hopkins. He has been the lead author on several international IBD clinical practice guidelines and is the national lead for the PACE program. He led the telemedicine program in Ontario which cut wait times to see a gastroenterologist from four months to just over two weeks. Helping people from afar has been of extraordinary value to patients and in summer 2022 he is leading a team that is expanding virtual care into five more provinces. He also serves as Vice-President of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology’s Quality Affairs Committee. Referral Information
Dr. Kerri Novak University of Calgary (Alberta) Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Dr. Kerri Novak University of Calgary (Alberta) Kerri Novak is an academic gastroenterologist at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Deputy Division Head for the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine. Dr Novak is an IBD-focused physician in the University of Calgary IBD clinic. Kerri started the first clinic in North America, performing focused intestinal ultrasound (IUS) for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), as a novel, non-invasive diagnostic tool in 2013, after training in Lueneburg, Germany. She is a pioneer in Canada, leading this clinical care innovation in IBD, aiming to increase the adoption and availability of this patient-centered, cost-effective tool used to monitor IBD. Kerri is also passionate about ensuring all patients, regardless of where they live, have access to high quality, expert IBD care. She has been visiting small, rural centers in AB for the last 10 years in an ‘outreach model’ and collaborates closely with physicians in internal medicine and GI to improve access to care for patients in rural AB. Alberta is a big province, and many patients residing rurally are challenged by long distances to travel for care, reduced access to timely care and a lack of education opportunities about their disease. She is excited to work with CCC to bring high quality, equitable care virtually to them, wherever they may live. Thus, Kerri is committed to her life’s work to improve health care delivery for IBD and believes strongly in a ‘patients first’ approach. She has 2 daughters and a cherished dog Iggy, and she loves to spend time with them and her husband outdoors. Foothills Medical Centre 3280 HOSPITAL DR NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 4Z6 knovak@ucalgary.ca Phone: 403-608-3332 Fax: 403-592-5050 https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/fmc/fmc.aspx https://www.departmentofmedicine.com/ Referral Information
Dr. Sharyle Fowler University of Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan) Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Dr. Sharyle Fowler University of Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan) Dr. Sharyle Fowler is an Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan and is the Director of the Multidisciplinary IBD Clinical and Research Program. She received her medical degree from the University of Calgary and completed her Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Saskatchewan. She then completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and an advanced clinical and research fellowship in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Her research interests relate to IBD and pregnancy, quality improvement, and health care delivery including the use of virtual care to provide improved access to care for rural and remote patients. Royal University Hospital 103 Hospital Drive Saskatoon, SK, S7N 0W8 sharyle.fowler@usask.ca Phone: 306-844-1002 Fax: 306-844-1523 Pre-Admission Clinic – 306-655-1711 Telephone: 306-844-1125 https://www.saskatoonhealthregion.ca/locations_services/locations/ruh/Pages/Home.aspx Referral Information
Dr. Charles Bernstein University of Manitoba (Manitoba) Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Dr. Charles Bernstein University of Manitoba (Manitoba) Dr. Charles Bernstein, a graduate from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine, and the UCLA Division of Gastroenterology Fellowship Training Program is Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Bingham Chair in Gastroenterology Research; and Director, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Clinical and Research Centre at the University of Manitoba. His main research interests are primarily related to IBD; in terms of optimizing management approaches; exploring predictors of clinical outcomes; and disease etiology including related to the gut microbiome. Dr. Bernstein has been a pioneer in Canada in harnessing administrative health data to study chronic immune diseases and in developing a population based database, the University of Manitoba IBD Epidemiology Database, that has both served as a model for the development of other similar databases in other provinces as well as a unique tool to study IBD. More recently, he has been actively involved in exploring the biological and clinical intersection between different chronic immune mediated inflammatory diseases. He has published over 650 peer reviewed articles, 29 book chapters, and is a co-editor of one of the seminal gastrointestinal clinical-pathology textbooks. As of May, 2022 his Scopus H-Index is 95 and he has had over 40000 citations. In 2009, he was named the inaugural Bingham Chair in Gastroenterology at the University of Manitoba. In 2012 he was elected into the Royal Society of Canada -Life Sciences Division of the Academy of Science. In 2019 he was awarded the Crohn’s and Colitis Canada Research Leadership Award. Among Dr. Bernstein’s interests is the assessment and integration of optimizing patient care by assessing local clinical practices and patients’ desires for care delivery including virtual care. With the assistance of the CCC PACE program Dr. Bernstein and his team hope to revolutionize the IBD clinic so that care delivery is more holistic and accessible to all Manitobans. University of Manitoba Health Sciences Centre 804F-715 McDermot Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3E 3P4 cbernst@cc.umanitoba.ca Phone: 204 789-3369 Fax: 204 789-3972 https://mycolonoscopy.ca/health-sciences-centre-winnipeg/ Referral Information
Dr. Waqqas Afif McGill University (Quebec) Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Dr. Waqqas Afif McGill University (Quebec) Dr. Afif completed his medical school (2003), internal medicine and gastroenterology training at McGill University. He went on to complete an additional advanced fellowship in IBD at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He returned to McGill to complete a M. Sc. (Epidemiology) and has been on staff at the McGill University Health Center since 2009. He is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and the Division of Clinical Epidemiology. He is the current Montreal General Hospital GI Site Director. He has a particular interest in improving treatment outcome in IBD. The implementation of IBD telemedicine network offers the possibility of improving treatment outcomes in remote communities that do not have access to specialized IBD care. Montreal General Hospital 1650 Cedar Avenue, Room #C7-200 Montreal, QC H3G 1A4 waqqas.afif@mcgill.ca Phone: 514-934-8309 https://muhc.ca/montreal-general-hospital https://muhc.ca/contact-us Referral Information
Dr. Jennifer Jones Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia) Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Dr. Jennifer Jones Dalhousie University (Nova Scotia) Dr. Jennifer Jones, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Dalhousie University and Team Lead of the Nova Scotia Collaborative Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (NSCIBD) program at the QEII Health Sciences Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Jones completed her core gastroenterology training at Dalhousie University in 2004 and went on to do a clinical and research fellowship in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases at Mayo Clinic Rochester in 2004 and 2005 under the mentorship of Drs. William Sandborn and Edward Loftus. From there she completed her MSc in Epidemiology while working in the IBD program at the University of Calgary, Calgary AB. Between 2008 and 2014, Dr. Jones started as an Assistant Professor of medicine developing the first provincial IBD program at the Royal University Hospital (University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan Health Region). In 2014 Dr. Jones returned to Halifax to take on her new role in the NSCIBD program. Her clinical and research passions relate to quality improvements through collaborative care initiatives and patient centered program development, care access, nutritional intervention and use of population-based data to evaluate IBD outcomes. Many of these passions will be explored through her participation in Crohn’s and Colitis Canada led virtual care program which will extend timely access to care to patients in underserved regions. QEII - Victoria Building Suite 915 Victoria Building 1276 South Park Street Halifax, NS B3H 2Y9 Phone: 902-473-1499 or (902) 473 6456 Fax - GI / Hepatology Referrals: 902-473-4406 Fax - ERCP Referrals: 902-473-5548 http://nscibd.ca/ http://nscibd.ca/contact-us Referral Information
Peter Habashi CaNVAS Director, Sinai Health System Learn MoreEn savoir plus × Peter Habashi CaNVAS Director, Sinai Health System Peter Habashi is a Registered Nurse and he has been working as a telemedicine coordinator and project manager of PACE IBD Telemedicine Program at Mount Sinai Hospital with Dr. Geoffrey Nguyen since 2017. Peter brings over 5 years of managing and evaluating virtual care to his role as CaNVAS Director. He received his Honors Bachelor of Science degree (Specialist in Psychology) from the University of Toronto in 2015, Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Trent University in 2017 and most recently Masters of Nurse Practitioner (Adult Stream) from the University of Toronto in 2022. As a registered nurse and soon to be NP, Peter works with Dr. Geoffrey Nguyen and Gastroenterologists at Mount Sinai Hospital to provide specialized nursing care and support to IBD patients in remote communities as well as during transition to adult care, preconception, pregnancy and postpartum. Peter also focuses on mental health support in IBD and he is the recipient of 2018 CANIBD-led nursing research grant to evaluate the efficacy of web-based Cognitive behavioral therapy intervention in alleviating anxiety and depression.