Dr. Shoo K. Lee OC, DHC, PhD, FRCPC, MBBS

Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto;
Honorary Staff Physician, Mount Sinai Hospital

Dr. Shoo Lee is a retired neonatologist and health economist. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto; and Honorary Staff Physician at Mount Sinai Hospital. He is founder and Chairman of the Canadian Neonatal Network and the Chinese Neonatal Network. He was former Scientific Director of the Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Chief of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital. He leads the CIHR Team in Maternal-Infant Care, and his research focuses on improving quality of care, patient outcomes and health care policy.

Karel O’Brien MB, BCh, BAO, FRCPC, MSc

Professor and Staff Neonatologist,
Department of Paediatrics,
Mount Sinai Hospital

Dr. Karel O’Brien is a staff neonatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital and Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. She is a clinical teacher and neonatologist at a very busy perinatal center that specializes in fetal diagnosis and therapy and also works in the follow up clinic. She has trained in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research. Her current research has focused on the development of Family Integrated Care, a model that changes how we deliver care to families and their infants in the NICU, and she has recently completed an international trial of this model of care. Going forward Karel is passionate about the importance of including families in the care of their infants, and investigating how best to support the entire team, nurses, physicians and parents to provide this care in a way that improves staff, family and infant outcomes. Her motto is “Be the change you wish to see”.

Dr. Kei Lui MBBS (UNSW), MD FRACP

Senior Neonatologist and Clinical Academic Chairman,
Australian and New Zealand Neonatal Network

Professor Kei Lui is a clinical academic appointed in the School of Women’s and Children’s Health UNSW and a Senior Neonatologist (former medical co-director) at the Royal Hospital for Women. Beyond the Local Health District and State Wide Forums, he has substantial management and leadership roles in the Australian and New Zealand Neonatal Network as the current chairman and on director board of the iNEO International Neonatal Network for benchmarking and clinical practice improvement initiatives. His areas of research interest include neonatal outcomes, neonatal epidemiology and clinical trials. Prof Lui was the ANZ coordinator of the International FICare trial” and was the convenor of the 2nd International FICare conference in Sydney in 2018

Dr. Neil Patel MD

Consultant Neonatologist, Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow, UK

Neil is a neonatologist at the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow. He leads “Helping Us Grow” (HUG) a unique collaboration of families and staff implementing family integrated neonatal care. Neil is also Clinical Lead for the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, leading the development and implementation of digital health technologies in close collaboration with patients, academic and industry partners. Neil is a Senior NHS Research Scotland Fellow and Scottish Quality and Safety Fellow.

Dr. Mary Sharp MBBS FRACP M Med Sci Dip RACOG

Clinical Associate Professor, University of Western Australia; Medical Co- Director, Neonatology (KEMH, PCH and NETSWA), Child and Adolescent Health Service, Perth, WA, Australia

Associate Professor Mary Sharp is the Medical Co-Director of Neonatology in the Child and Adolescent Health Service in Perth, Western Australia. The Neonatology Service includes the perinatal center at KEMH (92 beds), the surgical and transported neonatal center at Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH, 30 beds), the neonatal retrieval service, NETSWA. She is a clinician researcher with current projects investigating, adult outcomes after preterm birth, circadian rhythms in preterm infants, and improving hospital-based care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preterm infants. She is a member of the International Family Integrated Care Committee.

Dr. Jennifer Young B.Sc, MBBS, DM (Paeds) DipClin Epi.

Program Director, Neonatal Perinatal Medicine, University of Toronto;
Assistant Professor, Staff Neonatologist, Department of Paediatrics, Mount Sinai Hospital

Dr. Jennifer Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and a Staff Neonatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital. She is the Director of the Neonatal- Perinatal Training Program at the University of Toronto. Her areas of interest include medical education and neonatal transitional and community follow-up care.

She completed her medical training at the University of the West Indies – Mona Campus Jamaica then underwent paediatric training there. She completed her Neonatal Perinatal fellowship training at the University of Toronto.

She is the lead in the creation of the Life With A Preterm Baby organization which aims to bridge the gaps in transition from hospital to home for high risk NICU families. Her current research project FiCare Home, aims to assist parents in bridging this transitional gap to improve family function and infant wellbeing.

Fabiana Bacchini

Executive Director, Canadian Premature Babies Foundation

Fabiana is the Executive Director of the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation, CPBF. She is a journalist and the published author of From Surviving to Thriving, a Mother’s Journey Through Infertility, Loss and Miracles.

In 2012, pregnant with twin boys, she was introduced to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit world after delivering at 26 weeks gestation. Her surviving twin had a long NICU stay and was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Fabiana’s family participated on the research study of Family Integrated Care (FICare) while in the NICU, which led her to become a parent advisor at Mount Sinai Hospital, an ambassador for FICare having travelled across Canada and other countries to share her experience with this model of care. She has become a strong voice and advocate for premature babies and their families.

Marianne Bracht RN, RSCN, (Eng)

FICare Program,
Paediatrics,
Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto

Marianne Bracht has had 43 years of nursing experience in neonatology: bedside nurse, neonatal follow-up clinic, and subsequently parent resource nurse, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto. This role included supporting and coaching parents as they navigated the NICU, creating and co-leading parent education and peer support programs. She participated in the FICare multicentre, multinational, cluster randomized control trial. Her experience has given her insight into the struggles parents encounter in the NICU as well as following discharge. Since her retirement, she continues to participate in FICare projects and is a member of the International and National FICare committees.

Dr. Linda S. Franck RN, PhD, FRCPCH, FAAN

Professor, School of Nursing, University of California San Francisco

Professor Linda Franck holds the Jack and Elaine Koehn Endowed Chair in Pediatric Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. Her extensive clinical, research and academic focuses on maternal and newborn/child health, with an emphasis on patient, family and community partnership in healthcare delivery and research. From 2015-2020 she served as Co-Principal Investigator and Director of Postnatal Research for the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative. In 2020, she was inducted into the Sigma Nursing Researcher Hall of Fame and named the UCSF School of Nursing Research Mentor of the Year.

Dr. Liz McKechnie MBBS, MRCP, FRCPCH

Consultant Neonatologist,
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, UK

Dr. Liz McKechnie has been a consultant neonatologist in Leeds since 2008, in a busy tertiary unit with surgery and cardiology. After experiencing being a parent of a hospitalised child, Dr. McKechnie realised that they needed to do more for parents of babies on the neonatal unit. Working with the Bliss Baby Charter initially and then moving onto introducing Family Integrated Care in 2015. McKechnie has tried hard to share, inspire and progress FICare in the UK and further afield since then, most recently working with BAPM on the UK National Framework for FICare - being published in late 2021

Ms. Chandra Waddington RN,MSN, PhD Student

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing,
University of Toronto

Chandra is a PhD student at the University of Toronto in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. Her thesis is focused on clinical measurement of parent engagement in the NICU.

Her main interest is the identification of parents at risk for low engagement, focusing on individuals experiencing health and social inequities. Other work includes exploring parent’s perspectives and experiences of research in the NICU at BC Women’s Hospital.

Chandra is a member of the International and National FICare committees.