Peer Support for Families of People with Severe Neuro-Cognitive Disorders

Annette has been involved in basic education in Belgium for over 25 years; she even worked for the Cabinet of the Ministry of Health. In her early years, she participated in the well-being of mothers by helping them in various ways and thus acquired a fairly developed social sense. Annette was particularly involved in education and health, although she also looked at other areas such as preparation for free movement in Europe, particularly in relation to poverty, transport, agriculture , etc. She has personal experience as a family member and caregiver of someone with Alzheimer’s disease, which led her to question the lack of peer support programs in geriatric care. Annette is very interested in finding strategies to support caregivers.

Annie LeBlanc, Ph.D., is a full professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Université Laval and a researcher at VITAM Sustainable Health Research Center. She is the Scientific Director of PASSERELLE, the national training entity of the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) dedicated to inclusively and collectively developing, supporting, and maintaining scientific and practical capacities in patient-oriented research in Canada. She also holds a Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Mobilization and Integration in Practice. Her expertise focuses on mobilizing evidence within the healthcare system, advancing research methods and practices in real-world care contexts, and capacity building to optimize healthcare delivery while providing rapid and significant benefits for patients.

Annie LeBlanc, Ph. D., est professeure titulaire au Département de médecine de famille et de médecine d’urgence de la Faculté de médecine de l’Université Laval et chercheuse à VITAM Centre de recherche en santé durable. Elle est Directrice scientifique de PASSERELLE l’Entité nationale de formation de la Stratégie de recherche axée sur les patient.e.s (SRAP) dédiée à développer, soutenir et maintenir de manière inclusive et collective les capacités scientifiques et pratiques en recherche axée sur les patient.e.s au Canada. Elle est également titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en mobilisation et intégration des connaissances en pratique. Son expertise porte sur la mobilisation des données probantes au sein du système de soins de santé, l’avancement des méthodes et pratiques de la recherche dans un contexte réel de soins, et le développement des capacités dans l’optique d’optimiser la prestation de soins de santé tout en apportant des bénéfices rapides et significatifs pour les patient.e.s.

Maxime Sasseville is an adjunct professor in nursing sciences at Université Laval and researcher at the VITAM research centre in Québec, Canada. He has a PhD in health sciences research from Université de Sherbrooke and a postdoc from Université Laval in digital measurement and interventions. He has obtained multiple prizes and recognition for the quality of his knowledge translation products and implications. He is part of multiple research teams and endeavors for his skills and expertise in clinical measurement and evaluation, digital health interventions and applied AI to health interventions. He is a TUTOR-PHC alumni from 2015-2016. His research interest focus on patient-reported outcomes, digital implementation of outcome measures, psychometrics and multimorbidity.