Heather Bullock

Heather Bullock, MSc, is pursuing her PhD in the Health Policy program at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada and is part of the McMaster Health Forum's Impact Lab. She is the recipient of an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2016-2017). Heather has an extensive background in health care policy and knowledge mobilization, holding progressive leadership positions. She is on leave from her position as director of knowledge exchange at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health and addictions teaching hospital. In this role, she developed and led Evidence Exchange Network, an innovative knowledge mobilization initiative that aims to make Ontario's mental health and addiction system more evidence-informed. She also helped build a program that supports implementation efforts in Ontario's mental health and addictions system.

Heather has worked for the Government of Ontario as a research transfer advisor where she connected people within government with the best available research evidence to support evidence-informed policy-making. She also holds a Faculty of Medicine appointment at the University of Toronto and instructs a graduatecourse in knowledge translation at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Her teaching experience includes co-instructing a graduate course in knowledge translation at McMaster University's School of Rehabilitation Science and as part of the faculty for the Knowledge Translation Professional Certificate course offered through The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Heather's research interests lie in how large jurisdictions implement evidence-informed policy directions in mental health systems. Her dissertation is exploring how developed countries structure their implementation efforts and how Ontario implements policy in its mental health and addiction system. Heather serves in an advisory capacity for several provincial, national, and international initiatives such as the International Knowledge Exchange Network for Mental Health and the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health. Her expertise is sought globally and she has conducted training in knowledge mobilization and implementation for the governments of Ireland, Sweden, and Saskatchewan, and for the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa among others. She has master'-level training in behavioural ecology and evolutionary psychology from Queen's University.