Positionality
(About Me)
Born and raised in a suburb of Ottawa, Canada, I could be considered an "unlikely" rural health advocate. My first taste of rural living was during my time attending Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick, a town of about 5,300 people. At the time, the town's slogan was "Where you belong." Ever since, I have carried that sense of rural belonging with me.
My academic interest in rurality and its impacts on health and health services took root when my partner, an Emergency Physician, began to work on the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona. Through him, I vicariously encountered the perils of rural practice and the challenges of health services delivery in rural and remote places.
When our family moved to Potsdam, NY, I began working in the local health system. I led the development of a new Clinical Research department that we founded with the goal of increasing access to state-of-the-art medical care in our rural area. At the time, it was one of very few rurally-based clinical research departments.
My interest in rural health is based on a fundamental belief that place of residence should not determine health outcomes, and that rural living should not consist of compromises that limit health and wellbeing.
While I worked at Canton-Potsdam Hospital, I learned so much more about the challenges of organizing health care in rural places like ours. I enrolled in a Healthcare MBA Program at Clarkson University where I focused on rural health applications of management principles. Upon graduation, I began to apply this knowledge as an Associate Vice President at Adirondack Health.
Today, I live and play with my partner and two teenage children in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State. We take joy in the quiet, the ready access to outdoor recreation, and the many months of winter.
