RHI is pleased to announce that Calgary-based emergency physician, Dr. Ian Rigby, has been elected as Chair of RHI's Board of Directors.
Dr. Rigby has served on the Board since 2016 and also serves as a member of RHI's Consumer Program Advisory Committee. His academic interests lie in medical education and he has previously been the emergency medicine residency program director at the University of Calgary. Prior to this, he developed the department's interdisciplinary simulation program and codeveloped the procedural skills program in undergraduate medicine. After a skiing accident seven years ago, Dr. Rigby sustained a spinal cord injury.
Dr. Rigby's expertise and experience are complementary to RHI's geographic and culturally diverse board of directors. We look forward to continuing RHI's work under Dr. Rigby's leadership.
RHI would also like to thank Dr. Katharina Kovacs Burns for her tenure as Board Chair serving from 2017 to 2019. Dr. Kovacs Burns served on the Board since 2013, initially as Chair of the Program Leadership Committee. As Senior Manager at Alberta Health Services, Dr. Kovacs Burns oversees interdisciplinary and interprofessional teams in health research, education and practice. Dr. Kovacs Burns is recognized for her work in health and social programs, stakeholder engagement, policy analysis and knowledge translation. Her philosophy on knowledge translation was integral in shaping RHI's strategic direction and solutions-focused model of moving knowledge to practice. It contributed to a paper published in the Journal of Healthcare Leadership, and the Praxis 2016 Conference.
On behalf of the entire organization, we would like to thank Dr. Kovacs Burns for her commitment, dedication and leadership in helping RHI accelerate progress in spinal cord injury research, care and innovation.