Meet Our Guests
Episode 1: What do Public Health Nurses Do?
Heather Lokko RN, MPH, CCHN(C)
Heather has been a direct service provider, professional practice lead, manager, and senior leader during her public health career. She is currently the Director, Healthy Start Division at the Middlesex-London Health Unit. Additionally, as Chief Nursing Officer, Heather leads health equity strategy, promotes practice excellence, and provides nursing leadership in local/regional/provincial/national initiatives. Heather is the Community Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion and teaches at Western University. Heather is passionate about health equity, collective action, and building healthy families/communities.
Nicole Welch
Nicole began her career at Toronto Public Health (TPH) in August 2001 as a Public Health Nurse (PHN) in the Healthy Living Directorate. In 2002, Nicole began work as a PHN in the Child Health and Development Directorate. Within the Child Health and Development Directorate Nicole held positions as a PHN Consultant, Family Home Visitor Supervisor, Reproductive Infant Health, Early Years, Maternal Infant Health Manager and an Associate Director in the HBHC program. Nicole is currently the Director of Child Health and Development and the Chief Nursing Officer at TPH. Nicole holds an MSc in Nursing degree from McGill University and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Nicole is passionate about issues related to health equity and to supporting and empowering all our staff to provide high quality service within a healthy workplace.
Episode 2: Harm Reduction Approaches to Opioid Use
Rhonda Lovell
Rhonda Lovell is a Registered Nurse with a varied career in public health that spans over 16 years. Since 2017, Rhonda has held a specialized portfolio in harm reduction, providing nimble response to the complex and escalating opioid overdose epidemic in a rapidly changing landscape.
Rhonda is also known nationally through her past extensive work in fall prevention including as co-founder of the Fall Prevention Community of Practice and its innovative online platform Loop which serves over 1000 peer and expert members across Ontario.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rhonda continues to coordinate the naloxone training and distribution program for the region while also providing public health nursing triage and guidance full-time in the COVID-19 call centre at KFL&A Public Health in Kingston, Ontario.
In her spare time, she enjoys writing and long wanders in the woods with her beagle-dachshund Oscar.
Episode 3: Frontline in a Pandemic
Karly McGibbon
Karly was born and raised in the Sudbury area. She graduated with a BScN from Laurentian University in 2004 and is currently a MScN student at Laurentian. She has been employed by Public Health Sudbury & Districts for 17 years and is the lead nurse of the vaccine preventable disease program. Prior to Covid, a normal day for Karly would include immunizing infants, school children, travellers and taking part in the influenza program.
Since Covid, she has done case & contact tracing and is now the lead nurse at all city Covid immunization clinics. Karly feels that Covid has allowed for many wonderful partnerships to be built in health care. Outside of work, Karly is a wife and mother to two girls. She also loves Disney world, curling and cake decorating.
Episode 4: Supporting Childbearing Families
Christina Bradley
Christina Bradley is the Family Health Division Outreach Nurse with Niagara Region Public Health. She has over 20 years of experience addressing maternal and child health issues including collaborative programming, facilitating communities of practice, building community capacity, as well as policy and best practice guidelines development. Christina is also a Lactation Consultant, offering infant feeding support in the perinatal period and delivers group psychotherapy to mothers experiencing Perinatal Mood Disorders, also known as postpartum depression.
Jan Tomlinson
Jan Tomlinson is a graduate from the University of Western Ontario with her Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BScN), and has been a Public Health Nurse at the Middlesex-London Health Unit since 1998. Jan has had the opportunity to work in a variety of areas during her public health career including Healthy Babies Health Children home visiting, substance misuse prevention, childhood injury prevention, reproductive health teaching, and early years partnership outreach. Most recently she has been supporting MLHU in COVID pandemic efforts.
Episode 5: Community Campaigns and School Health
Rebecca Wickson
Rebecca is a Registered Nurse that has worked with families through Public Health for the past 13 years. She is passionate about supporting families and believes that the work we are doing today will impact future generations. Rebecca lives in Kingston with her husband, 2 kids, and 2 cats.
Julie Marquardt
Julie is a public health nurse with the Durham Region Health Department. Julie’s passion for public health began in her placements with Durham Region as a nursing student in the sexual health clinics. Julie was hired as a new grad and has worked at the region for 8 years. During her public health career Julie has worked in the immunization program, the school program and has had the opportunity to become the youth engagement coordinator for Durham Region Health Department. Over the past two years Julie has been part of the region’s COVID-19 response, with a focus on case and contact management in schools. Julie is also currently taking her Masters in Health Promotion at the University of London.
Episode 6: Strategies on the Streets
Natalie Meade
Natalie Meade is a Public Health Nurse at the Middlesex-London Health Unit. Natalie has extensive experience working in mental health and supporting people who experience marginalization with a harm reduction focus. As member of the Outreach Team, she provided support to Ontario’s first provincially approved overdose prevention site. Natalie was also involved with both the development of the Middlesex-London Community Drug and Alcohol Strategy and The Naloxone Program, before it became widely accessible in Ontario.