Congratulations to Laura Hillier, a member of the Kids Brain Health Network Research Management Committee (KBHN RMC), for her new role as Director, Population and Public Health Evidence and Evaluation with the Government of Yukon.
Equipped with a Masters in Epidemiology, Hillier has spent her career coordinating and evaluating health-based projects. For the last eight years, she was Director of Performance Analytics and Evaluation for the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
Her portfolio at CFI was vast, and while it included some health-based proposals, it also included many other projects. When she saw the posting for the Government of Yukon position, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get back to her roots in health.
“Being trained in epidemiology, I was really looking to get to a place where I would be able to more proactively influence positive change and potentially have an influence on the lives and health of people, which is what this new position will allow me to do,” says Hillier.
In October, Hillier left Quebec and moved to Whitehorse, assuming her new role which started with a 14-day hotel room self-isolation. The formation of this newly created position was the result of a recommendation from a report released in 2020 called “Putting People First.” This report was the result of a comprehensive review that looked at health and social services in the Yukon. The review found that while many parts of the system in the Yukon are working well, others need improvement with a particular focus on better coordination across the network.
Hillier will have some autonomy in how her role develops, with the primary goal of shifting towards a population health approach, leveraging existing data and noting data gaps to identify areas for improvement or growth when it comes to health and social services offered in the Yukon. Hillier looks forward to having her experience with KBHN inform certain aspects of her new role. She’s looking forward to connect with KBHN’s System Navigation Resource Project team, which involves improving navigation for children and their families living with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and other neurodevelopmental disabilities in the Yukon.
“I’m really excited about working with my team building on strengths and leading them towards an even better health and social services system here in the Yukon,” says Hillier.
