The University of Toronto’s fourth annual student-led conference, Public Health 2.0, will explore innovative and participatory technologies
Technology is not the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system. It entails far more than its individual material components. Technology involves organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset.
Ursula Frankin, 1990
The concept of Public Health 2.0 extends the ideas of user-generated content, participatory technologies, and public collaboration originally developed within the context of Web 2.0 to the field of public health. While not necessarily involving the internet, Public Health 2.0 ventures capture the sense of technological innovation and collectivism evoked by Web 2.0. Public Health 2.0 technologies are innovative but are not necessarily new. Furthermore, our conception of Public Health 2.0 encompasses the utilisation of everyday, ancient, or indigenous technologies in novel and collaborative ways to enhance public health. Illustrative examples of Public Health 2.0 include public health-focused unconferences, the deployment of photovoice in public health research, and e-patient groups. For a comprehensive overview of these and other examples, please refer to the Public Health 2.0 in the News page.
The Public Health 2.0 Conference was held on September 23, 2011 at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. The conference’s objective was to examine the utilization and implications of participatory technologies in public health. We extend our gratitude to the conference organizers, speakers, and attendees for their contributions to the realization of this objective.
Conference Description
Mandate
The Public Health 2.0 project examined the use and implications of participatory technologies in public health. The conference provided a forum for students, community members, organizations, academics, and public health professionals to share their knowledge and concerns about the role of participatory technologies in public health and the practical skills required to effectively use these technologies.
Objectives
- To explore how technologies are being or could be used to address public health issues in a participatory manner
- To showcase innovative or participatory uses of technology in public health
- To foster dialogue about the actual or potential implications of the use of technology in public health
- To provide a forum to network and exchange ideas about innovative, participatory public health technologies between diverse communities
- To learn hands-on skills for implementing different participatory technologies in public health
- To explore the shifting mindset in public health, from expert-driven to user-driven
Themes
- Engage: Using technology to promote the participation of stakeholders and create user-driven public health
- Explore: Using research to understand public health issues and to develop and evaluate responses in innovative or participatory ways
- Empower: Using technology to work with stigmatized issues or strengthen marginalized populations
- Exchange: Using technology to transfer knowledge between communities and the formal public health sector
- Enable: Using technology to create a supportive environment for health and the work of public health at the community, organizational or societal level
Speaker Biographies
Keynote speaker
Alejandro Jadad
Alejandro Jadad is a physician, educator, researcher and public advocate, whose mission is to help improve health and wellness for all, thorough information and communication technologies (ICTs).He has been called a «human Internet», as his research and innovation work seeks to identify and connect the best minds, the best knowledge and the best tools across traditional boundaries to eliminate unnecessary suffering. Such work focuses on a radical ‘glocal’ innovation model designed to improve the capacity of humans to imagine, create and promote new and better approaches to living, healing, working and learning across the world. Powered by social networks and other leading-edge telecommunication tools, his projects attempt to anticipate and respond to major public health threats (e.g., multiple chronic conditions, pandemics) through strong and sustainable international collaboration, and to enable the public (particularly young people) to shape the health system and society. For more on Dr. Jadad, please read his full biography.
Presenters
Lesedi Bewlay
Conference workshop: Web-based mobile disease surveillance and mapping project in Botswana.
Lesedi Bewlay is originally from Gaborone, Botswana and graduated from Indiana University in 2007 where he majored in Computer Science. He is the co-founder and Director of Technology for Positive Innovations for the Next Generation (PING). PING runs mHealth projects and mentorship programs in Botswana. Lesedi co-leads the organization and he currently oversees all PING technology projects and, alongside a motivated team, comes up with new innovative ideas for the organization.
Kevin Black
Conference workshop: Community Based Social Marketing: A people-focused approach to designing behaviour-change initiatives.
Kevin Black is a PhD student in the Health and Behavioural Sciences division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH). Before his acceptance at the DLSPH, Kevin worked in the social service sector designing social marketing and advertising campaigns.
Emily Brady
Conference workshop: Behind the Scenes: Make your next public health project a movie.
Emily Brady is a second-year Masters of Public Health student at the University of Guelph. She recently completed her practicum at Health Canada, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, where she completed a knowledge mobilization and digital messaging project in a First Nations community. Her interests include Aboriginal health, social determinants of health, health promotion, and public policy.
Dennis Cheung
Conference round table session: COIL – Collaborative Online Interprofessional Learning.
Dennis Cheung holds a Masters of Health Informatics from the University of Toronto and is currently employed both at Bridgepoint Health as their Information Architect/ IT Manager and at University Health Networks/SIMS as a Project Analyst. His specializations include areas of Health Informatics with particular interest in usability testing, change management, and personal health records.
Rumi Chunara
Conference closing address.
Rumi Chunara PhD is a research fellow at HealthMap and Harvard Medical School, with a background in building biological sensors. Her interests are on using information obtained from personal sensors to describe and predict population-level public health issues. Her research focuses on building and using novel information sources, statistical methods, and innovative ways of organising and visualising information to accelerate and augment healthcare in places with all different levels of healthcare infrastructure. Rumi is originally from Toronto and trained as an engineer; she received her BS in electrical engineering with honours from Caltech, and her doctoral studies were through the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. She also has gained clinical experiences at hospitals in Pakistan, Kenya, and the USA.
Rhonda Couch
Conference round table session: Supporting Practice Change with Wiki: Ontario Children’s Mental Health Outcome Initiative.
Rhonda Couch is Education/Community Liaison for CAFASinOntario at the Hospital for Sick Kids. She provides technical support for 114 CAFAS-user organizations across Ontario and facilitates regional communities of practice in person and via the CAFAS Wiki. Rhonda has an Honor BA in Psychology from Simon Fraser University and a Masters degree from Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Health Studies and Gerontology. Experience includes several years of working in both public health and in children’s mental health. In these sectors, she has been responsible for management of intake databases, in-agency databases, as well as assessment tool databases.
Lisa Crellin
Conference workshop: Community Based Social Marketing: A people-focused approach to designing behaviour-change initiatives.
Lisa is a registered nurse who is a recent graduate of the MPH in Health Promotion program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH).
Alison Crepinsek
Conference workshop: Community Based Social Marketing: A people-focused approach to designing behaviour-change initiatives.
Alison is a recent graduate of the MPH in Health Promotion program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH). She has worked with a variety of projects and organizations, including Youth Voices Research Group and the National Collaborating Centre for the Determinants of Health.
Angel del Valle
Co-presenters: Jennifer Catino, Alejandra Colom, Alejandra Munguia, Emma Richardson and Marta Julia Ruiz
Conference workshop: Participatory video: An empowering tool for program evaluation by indigenous Guatemalan girls.
Angel del Valle is a first-year Masters of Human Development student at Universidad del Valle in Guatemala. He holds a B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology and is currently working with the Population Council for the Creating Opportunities Program as the Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator. His current efforts focus on demonstrating that the use of technology in low-resource settings is an effective strategy to understand local context and the real situation of young Mayan girls in Guatemala.
Jenny Diep
Conference round table session: Towards increased social relevance: Engaging participation and enabling collaborative organization of scientific conferences.
Jenny serves as a Liaison for Students for the International Organizing Committee (IOC) of the 2nd International Students’ Meeting on Public Health (ISMOPH) 2012. She is primarily responsible for the student application process and the development of a global public health student network to achieve the vision of worldwide collaboration in addressing public health issues. She recently earned her Bachelor of Health Science from the University of Western Ontario, and continues her education, pursuing her Masters of Public Health in the Health Promotion and Global Health collaborative program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.
Katy Digovich
Conference workshop: Web-based mobile disease surveillance and mapping project in Botswana.
Katy Digovich is originally from Palo Alto, California and graduated from Princeton University in June of 2008 where she majored in Biology. She is the co-founder and the Director of Operations for Positive Innovation for the Next Generation (PING). PING is an organization based out of Botswana that conducts mobile health projects and mentors local youth in IT skills. At PING, Katy is responsible for co-leading a great group of staff, managing PING’s partnerships, keeping the organization on track with its long term vision and getting the word out about PING and their projects.
Pauline Fogarty
Conference workshop: Connecting young adults, community agencies and researchers across time and space barriers using information technology toward improved mental health.
Pauline Fogarty is a member of Mobilizing Minds’ Young Adult Team. She has received her Recreation and Leisure and Social Service Worker diplomas from Confederation College and is currently entering her fourth year of the Honours Bachelor of Social Work Program at Lakehead University. Her passion for social action led her to do her third year placement at the Gender Issues Centre on campus. Her employment includes working for Wesway as a Respite Worker, St. Joseph’s Health Centre as a summer Social Work Student, and Kanachihih Solvent Abuse Treatment Centre as a Casual Residential Worker.
Christine Garinger
Conference workshop: Connecting young adults, community agencies and researchers across time and space barriers using information technology toward improved mental health.
Christine Garinger conducts Research and Evaluation projects at mindyourmind, a non-profit mental health engagement program that works with youth, emerging adults and the professionals who serve them to develop reliable and relevant resources and communication platforms. These resources are designed using current evidence and research to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and increase access and use of community support. Through the use of active engagement and technology mindyourmind inspires youth to reach out, get help and give help. Christine, along with Maria Luisa Contursi (mindyourmind’s Co-Founder and Program Director) facilitate Mobilizing Minds’ Young Adult Team.
Eric Huh and Dan Shilensky
Conference round table session: Social gaming and motivation in health care.
Eric (Kun) Huh and Dan Shilensky are medical students at the University of Toronto with an interest in public health, technology, education and healthcare design. Mr. Huh has a background in pathology, toxicology, and computer science. Mr. Shilensky has a background in biochemistry.
Lisa Kuly
Conference round table session: From Voicemail to Email: Halton Region’s effort to make breastfeeding the norm.
Lisa Kuly graduated from Cornell University’s PhD program in Asian Studies in 2009. Her dissertation uses the lens of tradition to explore pregnancy and childbirth in Japan, paying special attention to the role of the community public health office in supporting perinatal health. Now based in the Halton region, she is dedicated to improving the health of women and children through community engagement projects and developing health policy and programs. She also provides consultancy services in the area of perinatal loss.
Luis Michelangeli
Conference round table session: Storytelling Medicine.
Luis Michelangeli is an Industrial Engineer and a professional sailor with a Masters in Engineering Design. Luis has worked in the past for important consulting and pharmaceutical companies in areas like marketing, financial services, and on continuous improvement initiatives. Later in his career he has focused in the healthcare sector. From a family of doctors, Luis has always had an interest in healthcare. Today his passion for innovating and applying engineering principles to healthcare based on human-centered design, has lead him and his partner Ali Shahzada to develop the product Storytelling Medicine at McMaster Children´s Hospital that seeks to reduce childrens anxiety. Luis and Ali are now looking to market Storytelling Medicine to hospitals as an inexpensive and effective alternative.
Latifa Mnyusiwalla
Conference round table session: Vaccination sentiment during the H1N1 pandemic: Qualitative and quantitative analysis of 480,915 Tweets.
Latifa Mnyusiwalla is a graduate of the Master of Health Informatics (MHI) Program at University of Toronto, and is in her final year of the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at University of Waterloo. She is currently employed at Global Village Consulting Inc. as a Public Health Informatics and Business Consultant providing subject matter expertise to eHealth projects in the public sector. Prior to career in informatics, Latifa worked as a public health nurse at Toronto Public Health in the Tuberculosis Prevention and Control program, managing cases of tuberculosis in the homeless and underhoused population.
Cameron Norman
Conference workshop: Designing social media strategy for health promotion and public health.
Cameron Norman has been working in the field of eHealth for more than 15 years and has served as the principal investigator for the Youth Voices Research Group, a health promotion social innovation unit affiliated with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. His research focuses on the intersection of design, systems thinking, and health promotion.
Michael Prosserman
Conference workshop: Creating a national commUNITY online: Hip hop youth outreach at UNITY charity.
Michael Prosserman found his passion for break dancing at a very young age. By the time he was three, Michael was already standing on his head while watching Saturday morning cartoons. Since then, Michael has performed for over 300 audiences of all ages, has spoken at over 50 schools, and has taught over 50 workshops across the world. Michael has done work in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Nunavut, the Yukon, Italy, and Asia. Michael started his own business, the Funk Fanatics, and founded a youth-led charity called UNITY.
Emma Richardson
Co-presenters: Jennifer Catino, Alejandra Colom, Angel del Valle, Alejandra Munguia and Marta Julia Ruiz
Conference workshop: Participatory video: An empowering tool for program evaluation by indigenous Guatemalan girls.
Emma Richardson is a PhD student in Health and Behavioural Science at the University of Toronto. Her research about adolescent indigenous girls in Guatemala builds on her experience working for the United Nations and other international organizations in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Alejandra Colom, Angel del Valle, Alejandra Munguia and Marta Julia Ruiz are on staff with the Creating Opportunities Program in Guatemala and Jennifer Catino works with the Population Council in New York.
Graciela Rivera-Manoz
Conference round table session: Towards increased social relevance: Engaging participation and enabling collaborative organization of scientific conferences.
Graciela is Program and Speakers Coordinator for the International Organizing Committee (IOC) of the 2nd International Students’ Meeting on Public Health (ISMOPH) 2012. Graciela has a Masters Degree in Public Health Education from the University of Puerto Rico and is currently a Ph.D. student in the Social and Behavioral Health Sciences program of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (University of Toronto) and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (US National Institutes of Health). She currently resides with her family in Wellington, New Zealand.
Martin Ryan
Conference round table session: Social Systems Design in Healthcare: Facilitating, rather than providing, breast-feeding support.
Martin Ryan is Strategist and design thinker at in-sync, a Toronto-based healthcare consultancy. He works in with Fortune 500 companies on a wide variety of innovation, consumer insight and brand strategy projects. He has immersed himself in subjects such as: the future of human mobility, healthcare policy, and the experience of a variety of illnesses. Martin is currently pursuing an MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University, where his research focuses on the cultural emergence of creativity. Martin’s interests are diverse, but are often inspired by the opportunity to transform underappreciated moments in our lives, into an experience that encourages positive change to emerge.
Sherida Ryan
Conference workshop: Trust in online communities.
Sherida Ryan teaches in the Faculty of Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research interest focuses on the interface of emerging information and communication technology, community development and social economy organizations. She is the Coordinator for the Community University Research Alliance on Social Business and Marginalized Social Groups as well as the Knowledge Mobilization and Social Media Director for the Social Economy Centre. Sherida is also an Internet research analyst for Metaviews, a Toronto based organization that provides research and consulting services regarding the relationship between media, technology, and society.
Ali Shahzada
Conference round table session: Storytelling Medicine.
An Industrial Engineer by training, Ali Shahzada has worked on process/quality improvement initiatives in supply chain, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. In his spare time Ali enjoys making and writing movies. His strong passion for social entrepreneurship led him to create and develop Storytelling Medicine in partnership with McMaster Childrens Hospital. Working with his partner Luis Michelangeli, both are now in the process of developing and marketing their product and have created a company that aims at creating patient centered solutions for healthcare.
Tara Syed
Conference workshop: Connecting young adults, community agencies and researchers across time and space barriers using information technology toward improved mental health.
Tara leads the Mobilizing Minds Young Adult Team and is a graduate of Trent University where she completed an Honours B.Sc. She hopes to go on to get her MD and become a physician. Passionate about social justice, she has volunteered within youth services for more than 7 years and has developed a number of initiatives for the Regional Multicultural Youth Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Since her involvement with the New Mentality project, she has been passionate about the importance of youth engagement within the mental health system. Her hobbies include ballet/jazz dance, playing the clarinet, and reading great novels.
Lesley Tarasoff
Conference round table session: Re:searching for LGBTQ Health: Examples of community-based research.
Lesley Tarasoff is a PhD student in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a member of the Re:searching for LGBTQ Health team at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health. Her research interests include experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and mothering, particularly among women with physical disabilities, debates concerning medicalization, and the health of LGBTQ people and other marginalized and under-represented groups, including how they access health services. Her work is grounded in intersectionality, feminist, queer, and critical disability theory, and she is keen on qualitative research methods, particularly intersectionality and self-reflexivity, in the context of community-based research.
Emily Vettese
Conference workshop: Digital narratives as an educational tool in food and nutrition practice.
Emily Vettese is currently enrolled in the undergraduate food and nutrition program and food security certificate program at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. Emily is volunteering her time to explore the experiences of international dietitians hoping to use photovoice as a way of exploring this topic further. Emily is interested in developing creative ways to engage students in the learning process, while ensuring that the material will be relevant to their practice.
Ciann Wilson
Conference round table session: Let’s Talk About Sex: Exploring young racialized women’s agency in the context of risk.
Ciann Wilson is a master’s candidate at York University who was a CIHR University Without Walls Fellow, as well as an Ontario HIV/AIDS Treatment Network Studentship Award recipient.
Bernice Yanful
Conference round table session: Towards increased social relevance: Engaging participation and enabling collaborative organization of scientific conferences.
Bernice is an MPH student in Health Promotion at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her interests include global health and public policy and she has a background in nursing and global development.
Ernest Yanful
Conference workshop: Green technologies in agro-food processing and water supply to safeguard health and improve livelihood in the developing world.
Ernest Yanful is a Professor and Chair of the Department in Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of Western Ontario. His research interests include the application of basic science to develop technologies for resource exploitation and the solution of environmental problems resulting from waste generation and industrial activities, such as mining, petroleum extraction, civil construction and infrastructure development. Recently, Dr. Yanful edited two books: Appropriate Technologies for Environmental Protection in the Developing World; Environment and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa: Managing an Emerging Crisis. Dr. Yanful is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. He has been teaching courses and workshops in waste management and water treatment technologies in Kenya and Ghana and is consulted on many environmental projects in many parts of the world.
Andrea Yip
Conference round table session: Engaging youth in the design of web-based mental health promotion tools.
Andrea Yip is a health promoter and researcher at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Her background is in filmmaking, biology, sexual health promotion, and more recently she has taken a special interest in the applications of design and design thinking to health promotion.
FAQs
What is a student-led conference?
A student-led conference is one that is conceived and organized entirely by students. In this case, we are all graduate students at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. For the past four years, Dalla Lana students have been organizing annual conferences about various public health topics.
Who should attend the Public Health 2.0 conference?
Anyone who is interested in learning more or sharing information or concerns about the use of participatory technologies in public health is welcome to attend. This includes students from any discipline, community organization members, faculty and researchers, members of the general public, and public health practitioners.
What does Public Health 2.0 mean?
The term Public Health 2.0 is a play on the idea of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to internet-based content that is user-generated. That is to say, individuals using Web 2.0 technologies are not merely passive consumers of content, but are active participants in creating and updating websites and maintaining online communities. Examples of Web 2.0 technologies include blogs, citizen reporter-based news aggregators, and social media websites. Public Health 2.0 extends the ideas of user-generated content, participatory technologies, and public collaboration to the field of public health. Public Health 2.0 ventures do not necessarily involve the internet, but they capture the sense of technological innovation and collectivism evoked by Web 2.0. Public Health 2.0 technologies are innovative but are not necessarily new. Our conception of Public Health 2.0 also includes using everyday, ancient, or indigenous technologies in novel and collaborative ways to improve public health. Some examples are listed on our Public Health 2.0 in the News.
What do you mean by technology?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines technology as the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry…, machinery and equipment developed from scientific knowledge, the branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences. In our view, this definition does not completely capture the meaning of the term. As Canadian physicist Ursula Franklin posits, “Technology is not the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system. It entails far more than its individual material components. Technology involves organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset 1990). In other words, technologies are not just tools; they are ways of doing things.
How do I register for the conference?
Please register on our registration page. If you have difficulty registering using the form, please let us know.