Opening ourselves: Understanding unconscious bias and its role in practice

Provincial Lead, Public, Patient, Family Engagement, Shared Health Manitoba

Colleen is a white settler with Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and British ancestry. She is a trained city planner, mediator, and project manager. Professionally and personally, she has worked to engage and empower communities and individuals to shape their environments and improve their lives. This has taken her from the fields of international development and non-profit housing to child welfare community-based prevention, and finally into healthcare. In her previous role at the Winnipeg Health Region, Colleen set the foundation for patient and public engagement and is most proud of the work she did engaging patients, community members, and staff to explore the impact of bias on patient experience, treatment, and outcomes. Out of this work came an action plan to acknowledge and address these impacts on the interpersonal, organizational, and systemic levels. She is able to move this work forward to the provincial level now in her new job, leading and coordinating public and patient engagement across Manitoba, supporting the work to disrupt racism in healthcare.

Program Lead – Underserved Populations Program, Professional Development Lead – Community Oncology Program, CancerCare Manitoba

Patty is a cisgender mestiza from South America. She is from Indigenous and European descent as a result Peru’s colonization by the Spanish.  She came to Canada in the early 2000s to pursue graduate studies, and is grateful that she can call Canada her home. Patty recognizes that she and her family live in Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, and is committed to take action towards reconciliation in her personal and professional life. Patty joined CancerCare Manitoba over 10 years ago. She works in the field of adult education planning educational programs for healthcare providers working in oncology across Manitoba. Recently, her portfolio expanded to include leading the Underserved Populations Program, a program that supports CanceCare Manitoba in providing equitable care to populations underserved by the healthcare system. Through her work with this program Patty is constantly self-reflecting, learning and unlearning, and expanding her knowledge on health equity. Patty is glad to be a part of an amazing, knowledgeable team that works passionately at enhancing cancer care for underserved populations. Patty’s training includes a Master of Science in Biochemistry and Medical Genetics, and a Masters in Adult and Post-Secondary Education. Before working at CancerCare Manitoba, Patty worked as a Genetic Counsellor providing individuals and families with information on the nature, inheritance, and implications of genetic disorders to help them make informed medical and personal decisions. Patty is married and has a 5 year old daughter. In her spare time she enjoys running, camping, hiking, reading, and drinking a nice cup of tea.

Aquatic Science Technician, Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Sem is a genderqueer immigrant from the Philippines and has lived in Canada for 8 years. He is a recent Biochemistry graduate from the University of Manitoba and hopes to pursue medicine as a professional career. As a 2021 Emerging Leader Award recipient, he has been recognized for demonstrating culturally competent, sustained leadership within the Winnipeg community. As a student coordinator at Community Engaged Learning in the UofM, he facilitated various student volunteer programming including Alternative Reading Week Winnipeg (2018-2019), Mutual Aid Community (2020), and Praxis Community Projects (2020-2021), which all take an experiential learning approach that allows student volunteers the opportunity to work collaboratively with various local community agencies in the North and West End of Winnipeg. He was also a member of the WRHA Local Health Involvement Group in the River East/Transcona division, which allowed him to share student-based perspectives on various healthcare topics, one of which is the historical and ongoing impacts of unconscious bias in patient engagement. Sem believes that recentralizing the focus on anti-oppressive and decolonial collaboration, relational accountability, and critical self-reflection are paramount to uncovering and disrupting personal biases that may hinder the goal towards ethical engagement with communities.