Dr. Allen MacLean, Chair of the East Prince Health Board is pleased to announce that Dr. Janice Keefe will be doing a presentation called, "Shifting Times in Home and Continuing Care and Its Impact on Family Caregivers," at the * East Prince Health Region [to Nov 2005] Annual Meeting to be held this coming Tuesday evening.
Dr. Keefe has recently been awarded the Canada Research Chair in Aging and Caregiving Policy. She has a Ph.D. in Family Relations and Human Development and is an Associate Professor in Family Studies and Gerontology at Mount Saint Vincent University. Her research areas include informal caregiving, (specifically work and elder care, financial compensation and assessment), human resource issues, rural issues and continuing care policy.
Dr. Keefe is dedicated to improving the lives of caregivers and the older people they care for. For example, she has developed a caregiver assessment tool that allows home care agencies to figure out exactly what kind of support caregivers need to do their work. This assessment tool has received considerable interest from governments and health care providers across North America and other countries. Dr. Keefe has published over 50 peer reviewed articles, technical reports and scholarly presentations. She has been invited to a number of national and international meetings on developing home care and caregiver policy.
Most recently, funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation has enabled Dr. Keefe to develop the Maritime Data Centre for Aging Research and Policy Analysis. She is the Social Science Chair of the Canadian Gerontology Association and sits on a number of community boards.
Dr. MacLean commented, "We know that our population is aging. The Board felt that the topic of home and continuing care, including the challenges of our caregivers, was a timely one and that will be of interest to a number of community residents."
The East Prince Health Annual Meeting will also offer a presentation of the second annual Charles Linkletter Brighter Futures Award, Board elections, presentation of the annual report and a review of regional activities over the past year. The public and media will have an opportunity to ask questions related to health region activities over the past year.
The East Prince Health Annual Meeting is planned for Tuesday, November 26, 7 p.m. at the Linkletter Hotel and Convention Centre at 311 Market Street in Summerside. For further information call East Prince Health Administration at 888-8028.