Ian Patton

Background

About Ian Patton

I am an experienced educator, communicator, community builder, mentor, advocate, and researcher with extensive experience making productive collaborations across a number of sectors including non-profit, academic, and industry. I have more than 10 years experience in higher education, including 7 years as a Course Director at York University in the School of Kinesiology. I also have 17 years experience (10 as a volunteer, 7 as an employee) in non-profit/health charity work with Obesity Canada. I am an experience patient advocate, public speaker and consultant in meaningful patient engagement. I am a leader in meaningful patient engagement which includes active participation myself, but also coordinating, recruiting, training and managing groups of other patients as well. I was an author and member of the Steering Committee of the Canadian Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines where I was responsible for all aspects of patient engagement and now the continuing public knowledge translation and patient mobilization efforts. I am also in a similar role for the Canadian Pediatric Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines. I serve on numerous advisory boards/committees as a patient advocate with organizations such as WHO, PAOH, Canadian Transportation Agency, Canadian Mental Health Association Global Obesity Patient Alliance, and several health industry organizations. My leaderships skills have allowed me to successfully manage diverse groups of volunteers and teams consisting of multiple stakeholders with competing interests. This includes the Obesity Canada Public Engagement Committee and the Obesity Canada Community Action Team. I also developed and manage an online patient community (OC-Connect) with more than 3500 members. I have extensive experience in community moderation and content development including blogs, webinars, newsletters and educational events. I am responsible for Obesity Canada's monthly Connected Conversations webinar and the annual Connected conference. I developed a patient advocacy training course and contributed to the development and delivery of educational content for health professional, policy makers and the general public. As a patient advocate I have organized campaigns designed to raise awareness and impact health policy including hosting events at provincial/federal government and letter writing campaigns.