Sherry Dupuis is the Director of the Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program (MAREP) at the University of Waterloo and an Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies also at the University of Waterloo. She holds adjunct positions in the Gerontology Program at McMaster University and in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph. She has a Bachelor of Music from Queen's University, a joint Master's degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies and Gerontology from the University of Waterloo, and a Ph.D. in Family Studies from the University of Guelph. She also has a number of years experience working in long-term care settings with residents and their families.
Guided by a partnership approach, Sherry’s research program has focused primarily on identifying ways to improve the quality of the lives of persons living with dementia and their families and to ensuring that the voices of persons with dementia and their partners in care are represented in research, education, and practice. Her current research is examining: (1) the nature of responsive behaviours in long-term care and the personal, interpersonal and systemic factors that make it difficult for staff to manage and respond in respectful ways to behaviours; (2) the experience of moving a relative to a long-term care facility and how to ease the transition for new residents and family members; (3) the impacts of forums and educational tools designed by and for people with early stage dementia and their partners in care; (4) the meaning and experience of food and mealtimes in the dementia context; and (5) how to develop strong partnerships in dementia care and support. Sherry is also committed to the knowledge translation and transfer of research into practice through the development of educational tools; the delivery of workshops, in-services and presentations at professional conferences; the exploration of alternative representations of research results that make research findings more accessible to those who can use the information the most, and through her advocacy work. Related to this, she is one of the principal investigators exploring the impacts of a research-based drama on images, understandings and actions in dementia care and support.
Heather Keller is a nutrition epidemiologist and dietitian with expertise in nutrition and older adults. Her research expertise includes healthy aging and a variety of nutrition interventions for seniors in general and seniors with dementia in particular. Her research spans community and institutional sectors and she extensively collaborates with community partners to conduct this applied research. Knowledge translation vehicles have been used extensively by Dr. Keller to promote uptake of her research. These have included the SCREEN Toolkit which helps practitioners and community providers screen for nutritional risk in older adults, the Tastes for Life Manual, which provides a template for diverse nutrition education activities based on the Evergreen Action Nutrition program, the Food For Aging Well educational pamphlet, and several fact sheets on eating issues in dementia appropriate for a lay audience. Dr. Keller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada and has published extensively in the area of nutrition and older adults. Her current research is focused on eating in dementia, social aspects of eating, nutrition resiliency, and nutrition risk.
Lisa Loiselle is the Associate Director of Research for MAREP where she has been employed fulltime since 2002. Her educational background includes a BA in Psychology from Brock University and an MA in Community Psychology from Wilfrid Laurier University, where she received the Gold Medal for Academic Excellence upon graduation. Since 1999, she has worked with Dr. Sherry Dupuis (Director of MAREP) on several research projects focusing on the psycho-social aspects of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, including, but not limited to the Ontario Caregiver Needs Project; Understanding Responsive Behaviours in long-term Care Settings – Phase I and III; Institution-Based Caregiving Across the Caregiving Career Project; Gentle Persuasive Approaches (GPA) to Dementia Care Evaluation; and A Changing Melody Forum Evaluation.
Lisa’s strengths are in qualitative research and program evaluation and her interests include empowering individuals and communities through capacity building and involvement.
Lori Schindel Martin graduated with a BScN and PhD from McMaster University School of Nursing in 1981 and 2004. Her doctoral thesis focused on sexual expression and intimacy needs of older adults living with dementia. Lori has been Associate Professor, School of Nursing at Ryerson University since 2006. Lori is also an Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Leisure and Recreation, University of Waterloo. Lori’s academic career follows twenty-five years as an advanced practitioner in various clinical settings specializing in chronic illness. Most recently she was the founding Executive Director of the Ruth Sherman Centre for Research and Education, a teaching unit affiliated with McMaster University. She has degrees in both nursing and sociology/anthropology. Her program of research, published in several book chapters and journals explores various educational strategies and research-informed practices associated with care of older adults with dementia. Her particular interest is in the area of responsive behaviours such as resistance to bathing and sexual expression when residents with dementia live in long term care facilities. Over the past ten years, she has supervised students with varying levels of research experience on projects that emphasize brain-behaviour-emotion relationships and person-centred care strategies. She has been involved in several research collaborations with faculty at the University of Waterloo as well as the RBJ Schlegel-UW Research Institute on Aging. Dr. Schindel Martin currently teaches in the Collaborative BScN programme at Ryerson University. She is also interested in the role that film, the arts, and simulation play in learning the key competencies necessary for excellent dementia care practice. She enjoys working with students, and believes strongly in the importance of debate and dialogue as communication strategies that enhance clinical decision-making.
Gail Mitchell specialized in gerontological nursing while receiving her Masters of Science in Nursing degree at the University of Toronto. In Toronto she worked with teams to help keep elders in their homes or to help them return home following an acute illness. During these years Dr. Mitchell began to observe that older persons struggled unnecessarily in healthcare systems that did not always recognize their personal views, value priorities, or quality of life issues. She began doing research to better understand the perspectives of older persons living with various diseases and situations. Understanding persons’ lived experiences and quality of life issues, in light of the restrictions and freedoms of the aging process, became the focus of Gail’s doctoral work. She completed her PhD at the University of South Carolina and following returned to Toronto to begin building a knowledge base that could inform health care professionals about quality of life for persons in long term care. Gail became increasingly interested in quality of life for persons with dementia and this interest led to her collaboration on research that generated a drama about living with dementia. The completion and collaboration on the play called I’m Still Here also marked the beginning of an exciting collaboration with Dr. Sherry Dupuis and the staff at MAREP. Gail has numerous publications on many topics including aging, quality of life, patient centred care and ethical issues in healthcare. Dr. Mitchell is currently an Associate Professor of Nursing at York University in Toronto.
Bryan Smale is a Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies as well as the Associate Dean for Computing and Special Projects in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, both at the University of Waterloo. He also holds an appointment as an Associated Graduate Faculty Member in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph. He has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Leisure Studies from the University of Waterloo and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Western Ontario. A large part of his research programme focuses on leisure and well-being across the lifespan with particular emphasis on older adults. Recently, Dr. Smale’s work has included an examination of the contribution of leisure stress coping to maintaining well-being among caregivers of persons with dementia, use of and perceived barriers to community support services for caregivers of persons with dementia, and the role of community-based recreation programmes in long-term care facilities across Canada. His connection with MAREP extends over several years and he has been the principal investigator along with Dr. Sherry Dupuis on the Ontario Dementia Caregiver Needs Project, the Community Access to Recreation Project, and the Partnerships in Transitional Care Project. Dr. Smale also conducts research on social policy, time allocations in daily life, spatial analysis of leisure resources, behaviour, and perceptions, and relationships among various social, psychological, and spatial aspects of leisure and health and well-being.
Tamara Sussman is an assistant professor at McGill University. Her research interests include dementia care, long-term community care services and caregiver stress. Dr. Sussman brings to her research over ten years of experience working with older persons and their families in both community and hospital settings.
In collaboration with Dr. Sherry Dupuis, Director of MAREP, Dr. Sussman will spend the next few years conducting a research study which identifies the experience of transitioning from community care to institutional care from the perspective of all participants in the care network: older persons; familial partners in care and formal partners in care. Examining care transitions is an important and understudied area in health service research. Exploring this stage in care from the perspective of all major stakeholders (i.e. older persons, family members and formal partners in care) offers an analysis that includes the needs of older persons and family members but also adds the important administrative and policy context within which professionals must operate.
Dr. Sussman’s doctoral work focused on the stress reducing and stress producing aspects of the long-term community care system from the perspective of spouses caring for their partners with dementia. Committed to the integration of practice, policy and research Dr. Sussman has been offering workshops to community organizations interested in the study’s findings. Through this process Dr. Sussman hopes to provide administrators, practitioners, older persons and families with data to support their advocacy efforts.
Dr. Sussman’s long term goal is to produce research which informs and improves health policy and practice and consequently positively impacts the lives and experiences of older persons and their partners in care.
Elaine Wiersma is an Assistant Professor in the Master of Public Health Program at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario. Elaine graduated from the University of Waterloo with her PhD in Recreation and Leisure Studies. Elaine’s research focuses on understanding the role of place in people’s experiences, particularly in long-term care facilities and with people with dementia. Some of Elaine’s research has examined residents’ experiences of long-term care, as well as staff’s experiences. Presently, her research is focusing on a number of different areas, including aging-in-place in northern and rural communities, masculinity and aging, examining the impacts of policy changes in long-term care, and using PhotoVoice with persons living with dementia.
Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program
RBJ Schlegel - UW Research Institute for Aging
University of Waterloo, LHI
200 University Ave, West
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
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