Patient & Community Partners

Strategic Platform 2

Our aim is to have every single research project start with a patient partner at the centre. We partner with patients because their lived experience makes research more relevant, impactful, and life changing. By working together from the start, we create better questions, better studies, and better outcomes that improve lives.

This team aims to:

  • Build a diverse community of patient partners across Canada to drive OsNET research.
  • Unite patients, researchers, and organizations as equal partners — from idea to impact.
  • Keep research focused on what matters most to patients by co-defining priorities, gaps, and solutions.
  • Engage children and youth as active voices in bone health research.

  • Partner with patients living with rare bone conditions to shape and accelerate this rapidly evolving field of research.

  • Partner with Indigenous patients in ways that honour their cultures, traditions, and needs.
  • Promote training, tools and resources that empower patient involvement at every stage of the research cycle.
  • Encourage all OsNET members to complete CIHR’s (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) online training modules on How to Engage Patients in Research.

2025-26 Focus

Update our website to clearly showcase who OsNET is and the impact we strive to make. By sharpening our message and sharing the passion that drives our work, we can better inspire and engage patient partners, clinicians, trainees, and researchers—coming together as a community to spark collaboration, advance research, and create meaningful change.

Encourage patient partners to help identify the top 10 bone research priorities in Canada-first through a survey of patients, health professionals & researchers. Then by participating with representatives from each group together to jointly identify what bone research matters most & focus on where we can make the most difference.

Once these key research priorities are identified we will encourage OsNET teams & members to design projects aligned with these priorities.

Leadership Team

Christine Thomas

Patient Partner

Famida Jiwa

Osteoporosis Canada

Jacinta Whyte

Canadian Osteogenesis Imperfecta Society

Suzanne Morin

McGill University

Romina Pace

McGill University

Leanne Ward

University of Ottawa