Meet the Team

Meet the team.

CISP is comprised of individuals who bring a broad range of experiences and expertise to the team. They are connected by a common enthusiasm for and dedication to advancing holistic community health and well-being grounded in equity and belonging.

Meet our Evaluators

Srija Biswas

Project Lead, CISP

Srija Biswas has a Masters of Health Science with a specialization in community health. Srija has worked with several non-profit community based organizations to manage and evaluate provincial programs and partnerships. Srija is skilled in program planning and evaluation, program and project management, community engagement, and qualitative and quantitative research. Srija is passionate about evidence-based client-centered approach to healthcare, mitigating the gap between clinical and social care, and non-clinical and social interventions for improved overall health outcomes while implementing a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Safiya Clarke-Mendes

Education and Learning Specialist

Safiya is a passionate public health professional with expertise in design research methodologies. Safiya has experience working in health promotion and research across the public and private sectors in Canada and the Caribbean. Safiya has applied her skills to enable collaboration between diverse stakeholders to address various public health and systems issues, including sexual and reproductive health, chronic disease, and holistic health systems transformation. Taking an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach to research, Safiya works to break down complex health issues and their determinants into actionable insights that reflect community priorities and drive social innovation.

Nicole Cormier

Event Manager

Nicole is an event production and management professional with experience in both the not-for-profit and corporate worlds. She loves every part of an event, from creative and logistics planning to day-of execution. She has worked for a variety of organizations, from boutique marketing firms to large not-for-profit venues. She has worked on events locally, nationally, and internationally.

Sonia Hsiung

Director, CISP

Sonia Hsiung is a project manager with experience in a number of Canadian and international non-profit community-based organizations. Most recently, Sonia led several projects at the Alliance for Healthier Communities, including Canada’s first social prescribing research project, a separate social prescribing initiative focused on older adults, and a vaccine outreach and promotion project funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Having worked in a range of sectors spanning from health care, food security, housing, women’s empowerment, to engineering, Sonia is keen to bring the strengths of diverse sectors together to build equitable, resilient and more connected communities.

Dr. Kate Mulligan

Senior Director, CISP and Strategic Advisor, Determinants of Health and Knowledge Mobilization

Dr. Kate Mulligan is an Assistant Professor in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She is a globally recognized expert in community approaches to health and wellbeing and led one of Canada's first social prescribing pilot projects. Kate is an expert advisor to the Canadian Red Cross in the areas of collective impact, community health and social prescribing.

Adrienne Scott

Policy and Government Relations Specialist

Adrienne is a former government executive with over 20 years of experience developing solutions for the most pressing public policy initiatives, including key areas like safe drinking water, corrections system reform and post-secondary education. Adrienne has extensive experience working with a wide range of government decision makers, stakeholders and experts to develop collaborative and evidence-based policy solutions that best serve the public good. Adrienne is passionate about the power of community as a source of well-being and is an active member of her local volunteer network.

Yordanos Woldemariam

Senior Project Manager

Yordanos is an accomplished public health and social service professional with expertise in community health, health equity, mental health, and chronic health conditions, with a specialization in design thinking and design research methodologies. She has experience managing complex health systems projects and collaborating with diverse stakeholders to improve population health outcomes. She also brings over 12 years of experience working frontline in the health and social service sectors in Ontario.

Meet our evaluators.

Meet the evaluators working on great things at the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing.

Kiffer G. Card, PhD

Kiffer G. Card, PhD, is the Director of Research for the GenWell Project Society, the Scientific Director of the Institute for Social Connection, and an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. In these roles, Dr. Card leads an active research program focused on social connection and health equity in the context of public health crises. 

Dr. Michelle LA Nelson 

Dr. Michelle LA Nelson is a Scientist in Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (Sinai Health System), an Assistant Professor within the Institute of Health Policy, Management,and Evaluation (University of Toronto), and the Chief Knowledge Officer for March of Dimes Canada. In these roles, Dr. Nelson leads an international program of research focused on integrated care and collaborative governance as a way to improve continuity of care, and has a particular interest in partnerships with third sector organizations. 

Vivian Welch, PhD

Dr. Vivian Welch is editor in chief and acting CEO of the Campbell Collaboration, Director of the Methods Centre at the Bruyère Research Institute, and Associate Professor at University of Ottawa School of Epidemiology and Public Health. Her research interests include methods for synthesizing evidence on healthy ageing and health equity.  She led guidelines for how to assess health equity in systematic reviews (PRISMA-Equity 2012), randomized trials (CONSORT-Equity 2017) and led the chapter on health equity in the Cochrane Handbook in 2019. She is currently leading an equity extension of the well-known STROBE (Strengthening Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology) guidelines.

Dr. Paul Hébert

Dr Hébert is a proud graduate of the IMHL program (class 2019), a critical care and palliative care physician, a researcher and health leader.  In addition to serving as Medical and Science Advisor to the Canadian Red Cross, Dr. Hebert is a full Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal. He was Physician-in-chief at the CHUM from 2013 to 2018. Since 2016, he has held the Research Chair for Héma-Québec Bayer in transfusion medicine. From 2010 to 2018, he was Executive Director and senior consultant to the President of the Canadian Institute of Health Research, responsible for developing the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research. He was also Editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal between 2007 and 2011 and served as Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group from 2013 to 2018. His research interests include transfusion medicine and frailty. He completed his medical training at the University of Ottawa and began practicing medicine in 1993. 

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