Jennifer’s (she/her) professional background is in marketing and strategic planning in higher education, and in public and private sectors. Since a sudden onset of severe abdominal pain, she has been on a journey of learning to live with persistent acute episodes of pain and adapting to the dramatic changes this has brought to her daily life. She wrote about her journey in a blog post…this journey continues.
She now leverages her skills and experience to advocate, collaborate and share her perspective as a person with lived experience/patient partner/advisor with national and provincial pain research initiatives and projects, including volunteering with the Chronic Pain Network, Knowledge Mobilization and Implementation Science (CPN-KMIS), the Canadian Pain Society (CPS) and the North American Pain School (NAPS’23).
Her passion for advocacy is rooted in the desire to increase the incorporation of the lived experience perspective into research, broadened awareness of chronic pain, improving understanding about the value of patient engagement in research and for improved access to health care and support for people living with pain.