Our Patient Partners

Foundational to PIRN's mission is working in partnership with children and families to understand their needs and perspectives and improve hospital care. Within our network, the voices of children and families drive research activities. Youth, parents, and patient partners are all integral members of PIRN and are directly involved in research studies and network activities, including setting research priorities for pediatric hospital care.

PIRN's Patient Engagement Strategy

Our approach to research involves meaningful and active collaboration between researchers and those with lived patient/caregiver experience (patient partners). Unlike enrolled study participants, patient partners are involved across all stages of the research process, including study design, outcomes measured, analysis and dissemination of findings. We build relationships that foster trust, respect, and collaborative partnerships.

PIRN’s Patient Engagement activities are led by Francine Buchanan and Carla Southward, who are committed to having patients and families continuously inform and shape research and advance the field of Paediatric Hospital Medicine.

Who is Involved?

Carla Southward, PhD

Patient, Family, and Community Engagement Coordinator

Carla is the Patient, Family & Community Engagement Coordinator for PIRN and POPCORN, and is based at SickKids. She wears another hat at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, as Manager, Patient Engagement and Knowledge Translation. Carla is a lifelong learner with a passion for mentoring and bringing people together to improve research outcomes. Before joining PIRN, Carla was the Senior Lead, Knowledge Translation at the Ontario Brain Institute, where she was responsible for ensuring the voices of patients and their advocates were incorporated into the research activities across six multi-institutional research networks.

Francine Buchanan, MLIS, PhD

Parent Representative

Francine Buchanan is the Senior Manager, Patient, Family & Community Engagement at The Hospital for Sick Children (Ontario, Canada) and the Ontario Child Health Support Unit (OCHSU). In this role, Francine supports a Patient-Centred Health Care philosophy by ensuring patients and families can partner with the healthcare system to co-create a future for children’s health care that reflects their lived experiences. Francine’s goal is to ensure patient, family and community voices are key drivers for change in healthcare.

Sarah Mooney

Youth Representative

Sarah has been a youth representative for PIRN since 2022 and has presented to PIRN members about meaningful youth engagement. Sarah is currently earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at MacEwan University. She completed her Patient and Community Engaged Researcher (PaCER) training from the University of Calgary in 2022. Living with chronic health conditions, Sarah became passionate about healthcare delivery, policy, and research early on. She has volunteered with Stollery Patient & Family Centered Care since 2017, and is an alumna of the CIHR Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health youth advisory council.

Bukola Ibitoye

ImPACT Fellow

Bukola Ibitoye is a doctoral candidate at the School of Nursing, University of British Columbia. Before starting her doctoral studies, she worked as a Lecturer at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. She has an MSc. Advanced Nursing from the University of Nottingham, UK, and a BSc. Nursing from Kwame Nkrmah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. For her doctoral project, she is developing a patient-oriented framework to guide the development and implementation of a pain toolkit of evidence-based non-pharmacological interventions. Bukola has been selected as the ImPACT fellow to participate in the PIRN immersive learning opportunity under the mentorship of Carla Southward and Francine Buchanan. She is passionate about patient engagement in research, addressing global inequities in pediatric pain research and developing health interventions to improve care in children with chronic illness.

Kimberly Courtney, MSc, CCLS

Parent Representative

Kimberly is the Family Engagement in Research Facilitator at the CHEO Research Institute, where she builds meaningful partnerships for patient-oriented research and leads initiatives with the Ontario Child Health Support Unit. In her clinical role as a Certified Child Life Specialist, Kimberly provides vital psychosocial support to children and families facing illness, loss, and new diagnoses. Passionate about integrating family perspectives into research, she collaborates closely with family leaders and researchers to ensure studies reflect patient and family voices, leading to impactful, evidence-based outcomes. Kimberly also brings her lived experience as a parent navigating neurodevelopmental health services for her child.

Parent Representative

Kim has been a parent representative for PIRN since 2019 and has partnered on many PIRN studies, including PREFER and CAREBEST. Kim became involved in research after her oldest daughter was hospitalized with bronchiolitis at 77 days old. When she was offered the opportunity to help those who had helped her, she was excited to join the team. Kim is a mother to two young children and has lived experience of caring for a hospitalized child.

Kim De Castris-Garcia