Susan Balkovec is a Registered Respiratory Therapist and Certified Asthma Educator in the Respiratory Medicine Division at SickKids hospital in Toronto. In her role, she provides asthma education to families of children who have been hospitalized or been to the intensive care unit (ICU) for asthma. She collaborates with the multi-disciplinary team regarding asthma management and with the families during scheduled visits in the ambulatory asthma clinic. As an educator, Susan has been very active within SickKids promoting standardization of asthma education and management with other staff members to improve programs. She has taught both students and teachers about proper asthma management at a number of schools in the Greater Toronto Area. Susan was also involved in the early stages of The Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, a prospective longitudinal birth cohort study still in progress which looks at early determinants of asthma and allergy. As the lead respiratory therapist, she directed the infant pulmonary function team looking at the role of lung function variables early in life.

Dr. Kaplan is a Family Physician practicing in York Region, Ontario, Canada. He is the Chairperson of the Family Physician Airways Group of Canada and the past- Chairperson of the Respiratory Section of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. He is a Senate member of the International Primary Care Respiratory Group and was the representative of the College of Family Physicians of Canada to the SARS clinical working group.

 A member of the Health Canada Section on Allergy and Respiratory Therapies, he also co-chairs Health Quality Ontario COPD Community Management standards committee and is a Board member of Thrombosis Canada. Dr. Kaplan is also the Vice President of the Respiratory Effectiveness Group.

Stacey McNeilly is a Registered Respiratory Therapist, Certified Respiratory Educator and Certified Tobacco Educator. Stacey works in a community hospital in Maple Ridge BC, as the Asthma Clinic Educator, Pulmonary Rehabilitation Coordinator and the lead for the Smoking Cessation Clinic. Stacey’s experience includes working as a Respiratory Therapist at BC Children’s Hospital (as a therapist and ECLS Specialist) and at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh Saudi Arabia.

As an individual living with asthma herself and working for over 25 years in the field, Stacey has a profound appreciation for how difficult it is to suffer with lung disease, and is a strong patient advocate. Stacey has been involved with Asthma Canada for a number of years in various advisory roles.

A native Newfoundlander, Andrew completed undergraduate, medical and postgraduate studies in Pediatrics at Memorial University before pursuing further training in Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Upon completion of his training, he returned to St. John’s to start a clinical practice. Since then, Andrew has been appointed clinical assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University.

Padmaja Subbarao MD, MSc, FRCP(C) is a Clinician-Scientist and Pediatric Respirologist. She is the Director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory at the Hospital for Sick Children. She is also the Director and Toronto Site leader of the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study. She is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Paediatrics and Physiology at the University of Toronto. She has held a New Investigator Award from CIHR for clinical research and her lab has been continuously funded by CIHR and AllerGen NCE. Her interests are in studying longitudinal objective lung function measurements from infancy to improve diagnostics and phenotyping of asthma.

In studying longitudinal trajectories of lung function and relating them to environmental exposures, she hopes to understand the developmental origins of chronic obstructive lung disease and factors related to persistence and remission.