Citizen partners

The COVID-END citizen partners brought the voices of citizens to ensure their perspectives were woven into COVID-END’s work, along with those of researchers, providers, policymakers and other stakeholders. Citizen partners made a significant contribution to COVID-END by:

  1. identifying (and prioritizing) issues to be addressed along the full spectrum of decisions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and response (i.e., public-health measures, clinical management, health system arrangements, and social and economic responses)
  2. ensuring that new evidence syntheses (e.g., living systematic reviews) being conducted address questions and outcomes that are important to them and involved citizens in their work
  3. ensuring that the pandemic response reflected the values and insights of citizens, as well as equity considerations
  4. providing strategic guidance to the work of COVID-END global and COVID-END in Canada.

Citizen partners were actively engaged in:

  1. the COVID-END global partner steering group
  2. the COVID-END in Canada’s secretariat, steering committee, and collaborators’ group
  3. the COVID-END global and Canadian horizon-scanning panels
  4. four of the COVID-END global working groups (Prioritizing, Accessing, Engaging, and Advocating)
  5. the COVID-END global Equity task group
  6. the Citizen Partnership task group, which engaged COVID-END global citizen partners 
  7. rapid synthesis work, including the production of plain-language summaries. 

The list of citizen partners is provided below. We thank everyone who contributed to COVID-END’s many achievements and look forward to working with citizen partners as we transition our work to the Evidence Commission Implementation Council. A citizen leadership group bringing together citizen leaders and leaders of citizen-serving organizations is working to advance the Evidence Commission's implementation priority to put evidence at the centre of everyday life.

COVID-END global

  • Brian Stafford (Australia) 
  • Cynthia Lisée (Canada) 
  • Elizabeth Opondo (Kenya) 
  • Euphrasia Ebai-Atuh Ndi (Cameroon) 
  • Janice Tufte (United States) 
  • Jenny Camaradou (United Kingdom) 
  • Lynn Laidlaw (Scotland, former partner) 
  • Maureen Smith (Canada) 
  • Phil Collis (United Kingdom) 
  • Richard Ballerand (United Kingdom) 
  • Toby Stewart (Canada) 

COVID-END in Canada 

Twenty-six citizen partners contributed to the CIHR-funded COVID-END in Canada initiative (December 2020 to November 2022) and collaborated with research teams on evidence-synthesis products.

  • Abu Boakai Dukuly (Manitoba) 
  • Alies Maybee (Ontario) 
  • Alison Irons (Ontario) 
  • Amanda Doherty-Kirby (Prince Edward Island) 
  • Annie-Danielle Grenier (Québec) 
  • Blake Hawkins (British Columbia) 
  • Cynthia Lisée (Québec) 
  • Émilie Rufray (Québec) 
  • Eva Waldona (British Columbia) 
  • Janet Gunderson (Saskatchewan) 
  • Johanne O'Malley (Québec) 
  • Juanita Garcia (Manitoba) 
  • Juanna Ricketts (Nova Scotia) 
  • Judy Porter (Nova Scotia) 
  • Kimberly Strain (British Columbia) 
  • Laurie Proulx (Ontario) 
  • Linda Wilhem (New Brunswick) 
  • Marion Knutson (Ontario)
  • Maureen Smith (Ontario) 
  • Michelle Quinlan (Ontario)
  • Mpho Begin (Manitoba)
  • Natasha Trehan (Ontario) 
  • Sandra Moroz (New Brunswick) 
  • Tamy Bell (Ontario) 
  • Therese Lane (Ontario) 
  • Toby Stewart (Ontario)