Robert Nolan

Background

About Robert Nolan

I am the Director of the Cardiac eHealth and Behavioural Cardiology Research Unit at the University Health Network, in Toronto, Canada. I am also a Scientist and Clinical Psychologist, affiliated with the Toronto General Research Institute and Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Key activities include consulting extensively to health care and social service organizations over the past 15 years regarding behavioural programs to increase client motivation for changing problem behaviours. From 1991 to 1993, I served as a founding advisory board member and contributor to the “Guide your patients to a smoke-free future” program, which was endorsed by numerous health care organizations including the Canadian Medical Association and Inter-American Heart Foundation. Between 1994 and 1996 I co-presented the first national workshop training series offered by the Canadian Register for Health Service Providers in Psychology, which dealt with lifestyle and motivational counseling for the prevention and treatment of coronary heart disease. From 1998 to 2002 I was appointed by the Minister of Health to the Women’s Health Council, for Ontario, Canada. In 2004, I established the Behavioural Cardiology Research Unit at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada. This unit specializes in behavioural counselling strategies to promote therapeutic lifestyle change, by means of individual and group interventions and with the aid of telehealth and web-based technologies. The research unit also specializes in behavioural neurocardiac interventions for cardiovascular disease. Through this research my lab has developed the Behavioral Neurocardiac Training protocol for hypertension, which uses biofeedback of heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity in combination with cognitive skills training. My current research activities include two multicenter clinical trials in e-counseling for persons with hypertension and heart failure.