Leadership
Leading the Way in Pulmonary Embolism Care
Meet the Organizers:
Meet the team behind Pulmonary Embolism Canada (PECAN).
Drawing on expertise across emergency medicine, critical care, hematology, and research, they are working together to drive innovation, improve patient outcomes, and build a stronger, national approach to PE care.
Lana Castellucci
MD, MSc
University of Ottawa
Kerstin de Wit
MBCHB, MD, MSc
Queen's University
Kerstin de Wit holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Emergency Venous Thromboembolism and is a Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Queen’s University. She works clinically as an emergency physician and thrombosis physician at Kingston Health Sciences.
Dr de Wit trained in internal medicine, emergency medicine and research in the UK. She completed a Thrombosis Fellowship in Ottawa in 2013. Since then, she has worked in both emergency medicine and thrombosis. She leads a research program which focuses on the diagnosis of bleeding and clotting disorders in the emergency department, and is funded by CIHR.
Asher Mendelson
MD, PhD
University of Manitoba
Dennis Christopher
PhD
Patient Partner
Dennis Christopher's experience as a former patient includes having had two occurrences of DVTs, one of which led to a pulmonary embolism. The difficulty of initial diagnosis motivated my research, which then led to patient partner work.
Dennis began his role as patient partner role in November of 2019, and since then has served in this role or as co-designer on several ongoing clinical trial projects.
Dennis feels that the inclusion of patients in research processes leads to findings of greater relevance to patients, as well as more clearly explained and amplified ones.
Dennis is also a first author for a research paper which explores factors in a patient's medical history that make PE the likely diagnosis in the ER.
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Suzanne Dubois
Patient Partner
Suzanne Dubois, from rural Southwestern Ontario, began her involvement as a patient partner in venous thromboembolism (VTE) research in 2017, after supporting her teen daughter through recurrent episodes of VTE, which included pulmonary embolism (PE).
Additionally, having lost several family members to PE, Suzanne is dedicated to supporting projects which aim to improve survival and outcomes for intermediate and high-risk PE patients. Suzanne draws on her experience as a community social worker, and her passion for knowledge translation and writing, to contribute her patient-caregiver perspective to VTE research.
Carol West
Patient Partner
Carol West has lived experience with the impacts of bilateral DVTs (deep vein thrombosis) as well as PE (pulmonary embolism), and has also been a participant in a clinical trial about anticoagulation. She is the co-lead of the Patient Partner Platform of the CanVECTOR research network, and serves on its Scientific Steering Committee as well as its Knowledge Translation Platform. She has been recognized by the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) as its 2024 Global Patient Ambassador of the Year, the only Canadian to have been honoured in this way.
Carol has had a long career in the private sector as an expert in trade facilitation and border management in Canada and internationally. This may not seem like an obvious foundation for her work in VTE research, but the elements of complexity and risk management, and the ability to work with multidisciplinary stakeholders are common.
As she leads and contributes to a variety of research projects, Carol understands the importance of listening and learning as well as clearly communicating and collaborating with others. She is personally committed to three research and advocacy priorities: mental health and quality of life, support of shared decision-making between patient and clinician / physician, and standardization and harmonization of policy and care which provides some capacity for diversity.
