About
Triple I started with hemodialysis patients and their family members asking researchers to bring kidney care into the 21st century.
The project is a partnership of patients, researchers, and healthcare clinicians working together to improve the patient experience of hemodialysis: how you communicate with your team, personalizing your care, and improving when and how you receive information.
We are consulting with people with hemodialysis experience (patients, family members, clinicians) about challenges they face, ideas for care improvements, and suggestions about how to move those ideas into practice. We want new ideas, and we want to find out what’s working well in existing programs.
The project is complete! We are currently writing manuscripts, stay tuned to read all about our work!
Our Vision
To provide better health and innovative care and support for patients on in-centre hemodialysis care and their caregivers through exchange of information, interaction between patients and healthcare providers and individualization of care by identifying challenges to in-centre hemodialysis care and developing cutting-edge solutions.
Meet the team
The Triple I team includes investigators, research staff, and patient partners at seven sites across Canada. The project is driven by the Winnipeg site team in collaboration with our patient partners.
Click the photos below to read each team member’s bio
Principal Investigators
Dr. Clara Bohm
Dr. Clara Bohm is an Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba and a Nephrologist in the Manitoba Renal Program. She completed her MD at McMaster University and went on to complete her Internal Medicine residency at the University of Saskatchewan and Nephrology training at Dalhousie University. She subsequently completed a Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2014.
Her overall research interest focuses on improving quality of life in people with all stages of chronic kidney disease. In addition to identifying challenges and solutions to better patient-centred care in hemodialysis through the Triple I Study, her other main area of interest involves characterizing the effect of exercise on symptom burden, frailty, functional status and other outcomes in hemodialysis.
Dr. Bohm feels privileged to be working with such a talented and enthusiastic team for the Triple I project and is excited about the project’s excellent progress and what we will able to accomplish.
Dr. Clara Bohm
Co-Principal Investigator
Winnipeg Site Lead
Dr. Marcello Tonelli
Dr. Tonelli joined the University of Calgary in 2014, taking on the roles of Senior Associate Dean (Health Research) at the Cumming School of Medicine and Associate Vice President (Health Research). Dr. Tonelli’s research focuses on improving the care of people with chronic kidney disease and other noncommunicable diseases. He completed a volunteership at the World Health Organization in 2013-2014, focusing on treatment of noncommunicable diseases. During this time, he also completed an MSc in Health Policy from Imperial College London.
He has published more than 450 peer-reviewed manuscripts and his H-index as calculated by Web of Science is 80. Dr. Tonelli is chair emeritus of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, a past President of the Canadian Society of Nephrology, and leads the International Society of Nephrology’s global research portfolio. He was the recipient of the 2013 United States National Kidney Foundation Medal for Distinguished Service and the Kidney Foundation of Canada’s 2013 Medal for Research Excellence for changing nephrology practice in Canada and beyond. Dr. Tonelli was elected a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2012 and named a “Highly Cited” researcher in 2015, 2016 and 2017 by Thomson-Reuters, corresponding to a rank in the top 1% by citations of all researchers worldwide. Since 2005, Dr. Tonelli has been the co-leader of a joint initiative with the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara, aimed at prevention of kidney failure in poor communities of Jalisco, Mexico.
Dr. Marcello Tonelli
Co-Principal Investigator
Calgary Site Lead
Winnipeg Site Staff
Priscila Ferreira da Silva
Priscila holds a BA (Hons) in Indigenous Studies from the University of Saskatchewan and a Masters in Community Health Sciences from the University of Manitoba. Priscila’s involvement with Triple I led her to conduct an ethnographic study for a master’s thesis to identify the constellation of barriers and facilitators particularly influencing the wellbeing and quality of life of Indigenous patients on hemodialysis in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This proposed study also seeks to understand how the structural barriers that Indigenous patients face are connected to a broader history of settler colonialism in Canada.
Priscila Ferreira da Silva
Melanie Talson
Melanie Talson, M.A. is the Research Project Coordinator for the Triple I project. She is a medical anthropologist with a background in the social determinants of health research. She holds a M.A. degree from the University of Victoria. Her Master’s thesis was a community-based research project working with a group of young female-sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya to gather and analyze their life histories. She has conducted community-based research with vulnerable populations of sex-workers, HIV positive individuals, seniors, at-risk youth and Indigenous people living with HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C and/or substance use. Melanie enjoys conducting personal interviews, gathering life stories, facilitating focus groups and working as an advocate for people facing multiple barriers to health such as poverty and marginalization. Melanie is an experienced qualitative researcher who has a passion for patient engagement and participatory research, ensuring patients are co-creators of the knowledge. Melanie has spent the past two years working in the field of kidney health research as the Coordinator for Triple I, as a qualitative research consultant and as an independent research consultant for the National Kidney Foundation of Canada. In her spare time, she enjoys playing with her two children, usually outside, hiking, biking, camping and skiing.
Melanie Talson
Ashley Seitz
Ashley Seitz, BSc, recently completed her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Manitoba. Her role at CDIC involves coordinating multiple studies including the Triple I Project which aims to improve Information, Interactions and Individualization in in-centre hemodialysis care, as well as Mind the Gap, which aims to improve the provision of mental health services for people receiving in-centre hemodialysis across Canada.
Ashley Seitz
Patient partners
Arlene Desjarlais
My name is Arlene Desjarlais. My husband Glen and I are of Métis; we live in Winnipeg, Manitoba and this is our story. My husband Glen and I were introduced to the world of dialysis acutely in September 2012. Glen and I along with his renal team had been in the planning stages of Glen’s transition from monitoring to dialysis and transplant planning just prior to his acute start September morning. I called the renal clinic at Seven Oaks Hospital after Glen had endured a very rough night of overall feeling as though his body was about to give out at any time. I spoke with nurse Louise, and she instructed me to bring him right away as they would be waiting for us and that Glen would be having an emergency procedure to insert a central line and would be hooked up to his 1st hemodialysis treatment that very morning. Glen and I were terrified before arriving at the clinic, and I was sure that he was not going to survive. As I watched Glen take every labored breath during that 1st treatment, I knew our lives were forever changed and we had become a part of a brand-new family.
Although Glen initially started on in-centre hemodialysis, he was given the opportunity to train on peritoneal dialysis (PD). In January 2013, we attended the training together and were quite surprised by how quickly we were able to learn what needed to be done for this type of dialysis. Once fully trained, we were sent home with all the supplies Glen needed to start this treatment at home that very night. The freedom that PD brought to our lives meant that although he did have to perform a life-sustaining treatment as part of our everyday life, we were able to live a normal active life.
Things changed for Glen however in 2015, he had endured many challenges with his health due to his chronic kidney disease. Although he was able to do PD at home for almost 2 ½ years, he was faced with having to switch back to in-centre hemodialysis. Glen’s renal team felt that this was the best course of action. Glen had heart bypass surgery and he was at home recovering when discussions were had about Glen being trained to do home hemodialysis, and he started training in September 2015 with the Home Hemodialysis team. Although reluctant at first, he was able to complete his training and start doing his dialysis once again at home by the end of October 2015. At the time of Glen’s passing in February of 2016, he was able to set his own dialysis schedule which once again meant he had the freedom to live life fully as he no longer had to seek treatment in centre.
During our 4 years with our renal team, Glen had endured many complications. However, with every complication there was always a positive side to things. We learned that no matter what setback or complication there was, our team was behind us all the way. I learned that no matter what to always be persistent and ask as many questions as necessary until I felt we were heard. I learned that our health system can be flawed at times and that you must speak loudly to be heard. I learned that there are many patients going through all of this alone, and unlike my husband Glen, they do not have that voice speaking up for them in their time of need. My life’s mission is to now carry on Glen’s legacy by using my voice to champion all that the renal community is working on to not only find a cure for CKD but to raise awareness. I have found a purpose and a passion after the death of my beloved Glen to help ensure that no other family has to go through such a loss.
Arlene Desjarlais
George Fontaine
My name is George Jeffrey Fontaine and I was born in 1961 in Brandon, Manitoba and I am a First Nations person. I trained at the RCMP Depot in Regina, Saskatchewan to become a Constable with the RCMP division in Manitoba. After a few years I left the force, finding my way to El Paso, Texas where I trained as a heavy equipment and transport operator and began my 25-year career as a Class 1 Long Haul driver. My family life includes being a father to two daughters and a grandfather to ten grandchildren. My children live close by, and I spend as much time as possible visiting and helping them.
In 1999, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and in 2009 I was further diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which resulted in major surgery. In 2015, due to kidney disease, I began receiving dialysis with the Renal Care Program in Winnipeg.
I have volunteered as a Patient Partner with the Can-SOLVE Triple I research project since its inception. I came into this project because it gave me the opportunity to advocate on behalf of myself and other patients since I felt that we needed more individualized information about chronic kidney disease and better communication with healthcare providers. Triple I continually provides me the chance to help create better services and information for patients and caregivers.
George Fontaine
Michael McCormick
At 18 years of age, I was diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). My primary disease process is Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS); I have been on hemodialysis for over 27 years, and on home hemodialysis for the past 15 years. I have had two living related kidney transplants, from my Dad and from a cousin. Both transplants failed immediately on the operating room table with extremely aggressive reoccurrence of FSGS in the transplanted kidney. At this time, I am not on the transplant list, as it is believed that the same outcome will occur as with the first two transplants.
I work full time as a Senior Manager at the Toronto Stock Exchange. I workout on a regular basis, including yoga, to maintain my overall health. In the winter, I curl competitively, reaching provincial finals twice; in the summer, I sail and golf. My wife and I also like to travel, we enjoy discovering new places. We have travelled to almost every province in Canada, over a dozen cities in the US, several locations in the Caribbean and many countries in Europe. Beyond the additional complexities of booking travel like everyone else, part of our travel planning includes finding and arranging a local dialysis unit at our destination.
I have recently become active with the Kidney Foundation of Canada – Ontario Branch, as a Peer Support Counselor. I believe that having access to a network of like-minded, progressive patients who have a keen interest in living a productive life, despite being diagnosed with CKD, is critical. I am part of a roster of several dialysis patients that are available to be matched to new patients and have spoken publicly at York University on risk factors and treatment options for CKD. I am also a standing member of the Ontario Renal Network (ORN) Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC).
Michael McCormick
Timothy Slater
Hello, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Timothy Slater and I am a new Patient Partner with the Triple I project. My previous focus in life was working full time for the Federal Government as the Chief of Facilities Management at a Federal Multilevel Institution, Collins Bay Institution (Kingston, Ontario). After working for the Federal Government for 31 years, retirement led me – like a lot of my peers – into volunteerism. My first volunteer position was when I joined the Kingston General Hospital as a Patient and Family Advisor Committee (PFAC) member, and I am now volunteering as a Patient Partner member of the Triple I team.
My attraction to the Triple I team is that their members share my vision of what hemodialysis should be all about, which is a multi-disciplined, patient friendly, cooperative interaction that is meaningful to both patients and staff. What I hope to offer to the Triple I team is my 28 years of experience as a renal dialysis patient and three years as a transplant patient. During my time as a dialysis patient, I have seen positive changes both in the mechanics of dialysis and recently in the co-operative approach in the clinics.
I firmly believe in patient self-care and I live my life as an example that hemodialysis is not a death sentence, but rather something that can be managed with the right knowledge, support, and attitude. I am looking forward to helping the Triple I team move forward into the Second Wave of this project.
Timothy Slater
Hans Vorster
My name is Hans Vorster, I live in Kingston, Ontario, and I’m a happy man. Some 25 years ago, I was diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease resulting from a disease called Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (aka FSGS) which is incurable and even as little as 40-50 years ago would likely have led to an early death. But treatment was possible and has developed on a steep curve over that interval. I was a witness to and a beneficiary of those evolving treatments. Hence I have traveled the full journey of CKD from diagnosis to monitoring and treatment of symptoms through dialysis, in-centre and at home, and finally the transplant of a preowned, well maintained and healthy kidney. I feel great and I live as normal a life as any other grey haired old fart, and that makes me a very happy man.
However, none of this would have happened without a crowd of other people, from all the professionals, nurses, physicians, support staff, lab technicians and many more as well, of course, friends and family, caregivers and finally the consideration and generosity of my anonymous donor. This leaves me with a considerable sense of obligation to do something in return. I’m in no position to fund a hospital or perhaps a satellite clinic or even a dialysis chair, but I do have time, and a more or less still working brain, and mostly experience. Therefore, I have chosen to dedicate as much time as I can muster to help in improving the patient experience by working on projects that assure that patients and their caregivers are a fully integrated part of their own care team (Patient Centered Care), that communications among and between the various components of care are fully transparent and accessible and that research conducted into renal disease and others, give full consideration of the impact the research will have on patients, not just the outcomes but the process, by engaging patients at all levels of the undertaking from conceptualization and design through execution, analysis and reporting. There have been great strides made in all these areas to the degree that we can point to a culture shift in the patient-professional medical relationship – and this makes me a happy man!
Hans Vorster
Project Collaborators
Dr. Claire Harris
Dr. Claire Harris received her MD and completed Internal Medicine and Nephrology training at the University of British Columbia. After her Nephrology fellowship, she completed an extra year of training in Hemodialysis at UBC and a certificate in quality improvement at the University of Toronto. She recently completed a Masters in Health Administration, also at UBC. Her area of interest is quality improvement in the area of hemodialysis as well as clinical research in this area. She is a clinical nephrologist working at Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver.
Dr. Claire Harris
Vancouver
Dr. Matthew James
Dr. James is a kidney doctor and specializes in health systems and services research. He uses multidisciplinary initiatives to implement and evaluate prevention strategies for disorders and to improve care for patients with kidney and cardiovascular disease. Working with stakeholders in medicine, Dr. James’ work focuses on clinical implementation of decision support strategies, use of risk prediction models, and alerting systems in clinical electronic systems.
Dr. Matthew James
Calgary
Dr. Neesh Pannu
Dr. Neesh Pannu is the co-Scientific Director for the Kidney Health Strategic Clinical Network. She is a nephrologist and Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta. She received her medical training at the University of Alberta, Stanford University and completed her SM in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard University. Her research interests are primarily in the area of diagnosis, management, and outcomes of acute kidney injury. She is member of the Alberta Kidney Disease Network (AKDN) and the Interdisciplinary Chronic Disease Collaboration (ICDC). She also holds the position of assistant Dean of Clinical Research Platforms at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Neesh Pannu
Edmonton
Dr. Manish Sood
Dr. Sood is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa with a cross appointment at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Associate Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Deputy Editor- in- Chief and founder of the Canadian Journal of Kidney Health and Disease, and holds the Jindal Research Chair for the Prevention of Kidney Disease. He completed his undergraduate (BSc) at Carleton and Lancaster University (UK) followed by medical school, internal medicine and nephrology residency training at the University of Toronto. He began his career as a clinical nephrologist at the St Boniface Hospital inWinnipeg,Manitoba, gradually developing an interest in research and clinical epidemiology and in 2013 became a clinician scientist. He completed his Masters in Science in Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa. More recently, he became the Associate Director of the Kidney, Dialysis, transplantation Program at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, a Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns (DOPPS) country investigator, and a member of the Canadian Organ Replacement Registry (CORR) Board of Directors.
Dr. Manish Sood
Ottawa
Dr. Karthik Tennankore
Dr. Karthik Tennankore received his MD at the University of Western Ontario, and completed Internal Medicine and Nephrology at Dalhousie University. He went on to complete a two year clinical fellowship in home dialysis at the Toronto General Hospital (University of Toronto), and concurrently obtained a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology through Harvard University.
He joined the Dalhousie Division of Nephrology in 2013. His clinical expertise is primarily in the area of home dialysis and he is the medical lead of home therapies for the Nova Scotia Central Zone Renal Program. From the perspective of research, he is the current research lead for the Dalhousie Division of Nephrology (Department of Medicine). He is interested in studying and improving outcomes of patients after initiation of home and in-center dialysis and transplantation, and in studying the effect of frailty on dialysis and transplant patient outcomes. He is involved in clinical trials and conducts a number of prospective cohort studies in nephrology.
Dr. Karthik Tennankore
Halifax
Alison Thomas
Alison Thomas, RN (EC), MN, CNeph(C), is a hemodialysis NP. A nephrology nurse with more than 30 years experience, her research interests are in clinical hemodialysis care, patient quality of life, and Quality Improvement. Alison has an academic appointment as adjunct lecturer at the University of Toronto Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and acts as mentor and preceptor for NP students. Her clinical work involves the longitudinal care of seventy-two chronic hemodialysis patients in collaboration with nephrologist colleagues. She has served on the Canadian Association of Nephrology Nurses and Technologists (CANNT) Board of Directors, the Canadian Nursing Association Nephrology Certification examination writing team, and has published in nephrology nursing and medical journals.
Alison Thomas
Toronto
Dr. Stephanie Thompson
Dr. Thompson is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Nephrology. She completed her clinical Nephrology training and her Internal Medicine training at the University of Alberta. She subsequently obtained a PhD in Epidemiology through the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. She is the physician lead for the Northern Alberta Renal Program’s Clinical Exercise Program. Clinical Practice Dr. Thompson has a general Nephrology out-patient practice and is one of the attending Nephrologists on the home and peritoneal dialysis units. She is also the attending Nephrologist for Grande Prairie and Peace River satellite dialysis units. Research Dr. Thompson’s research interests include trials that test lifestyle interventions in people with chronic kidney disease, with a focus on exercise and developing strategies on how to increase the adoption of exercise into the care of people with chronic kidney disease. She is also interested in examining how behavioural interventions and technology can be used to promote patient engagement in self-care. Dr. Thompson’s methodological interests include the design and conduct of clinical trials, qualitative research, and realist evaluation and synthesis in the evaluation of healthcare delivery.
Dr. Stephanie Thompson
Edmonton
Dr. Allison Tong
Professor Allison Tong is a Principal Research Fellow with a Robinson Fellowship at the Sydney School of Public Health, The University of Sydney. She held an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Fellowship to 2019. She is a social scientist with experience in patient-centred outcomes research in chronic disease, particularly chronic kidney disease. Allison has an interest in patient involvement in research, including in the context of research priority setting, the development of core outcomes for research, and in the co-production of clinical trials. She co-founded and is on the Executive Committee of the global Standardised Outcomes in Nephrology (SONG) Initiative, which aims to establish consensus-based core outcomes across the spectrum of chronic kidney disease (www.songinitiative.org). She established the Patient-Centred Research Network (PACER, www.pacernetwork.org.au) network, which aims to facilitate knowledge exchange, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and innovation in conducting and implementing patient-centred outcomes research and patient involvement in research.
Dr. Allison Tong
Australia