Linked by the heart
Meet the CHF Alliance Team
The CHF Alliance is led by Dr. Jean Rouleau, a senior cardiologist with extensive administrative and research experience, and is co-led by Marc Bains, a patient partner who developed heart failure at the age of 23 and subsequently received a heart transplant. They are supported by a diverse and experienced Executive Committee (EC), which is responsible for preparing the annual budget and research priorities for approval by the Scientific Committee, the day-to-day operations of the network, the management of the network staff, and the management and integration of partnerships.
Dr. Jean L. Rouleau
Scientific Director
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Rouleau is an adult heart failure cardiologist at the Montreal Heart Institute. He is a former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the Université de Montréal and past Director of the CIHR Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health. In 2011, he directed the development of what has become the largest strategic program of CIHR, the Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR). He is an executive committee member of several large clinical trials, and member or chair of several data safety monitoring committees of clinical trials. He is a member of the order of Canada and has recently been introduced into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.
Marc Bains
Scientific Co-Director
Member of the Excutive Committee
Marc Bains is a heart transplant recipient diagnosed with heart failure at the age of 23. He is the Co-founder of HeartLife Foundation, holds a BBA in Entrepreneurial Leadership from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, is an independent business advisor and marketing consultant for startups, and is extraordinarily passionate about promoting a coordinated approach to heart failure.
Dr. Alexandra King
Indigenous Team Co-Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Alexandra King is a member of Nipissing First Nation. She is an Internal Medicine Specialist with a focus on HIV, hepatitis C and often related conditions. She is the Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and Wellness at the U. of Saskatchewan and co-leads Pewaseskwan (the Indigenous Wellness Research Group). Alexandra brings leadership skills in culturally safe and responsive research and care, reconciliation, etuaptmumk (Two-eyed Seeing), which brings together Indigenous and Western worldviews or forms of knowledge, and Ethical Space—which needs to be created when peoples with disparate worldviews engage with each other. She is a leader in developing Indigenous research methodology and was instrumental in the creation of the Indigenous Community Research Partnerships Training Resource through Queen’s University. She serves on many initiatives, including The Scientific Advisory Committee of ICES, the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C, and the Indigenous Peoples’ Engagement and Research Council, which provides guidance to health research projects including the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada and the CHF Alliance, both of which Pewaskeswan is involved with.
Dr. Salim Yusuf
Associate Scientific Director
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Salim Yusuf is a Distinguished University Professor of Medicine at McMaster University, and Executive Director of the Population Health Research Institute. He holds a Heart and Stroke Foundation Research Chair, was a Senior Scientist of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (1999-2004). His work has advanced the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases around the world and has pioneered and demonstrated the value of dual antithrombotic therapies, ACE-inhibitors and the polypill to reduce CVD substantially around the world. Dr. Yusuf received many prestigious awards througout his carrier. He has also been inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, and appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has led over 50 major international studies and several of these have changed medical practice. He is a Past President of the World Heart Federation, where he initiated the Emerging Leaders program (now named after him) to build capacity for implementation and policy research in all continents of the world, with the aim of halving the CVD burden globally within a generation.
Dr. Seema Mital
Pediatric Team Co-Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Seema Mital is a Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiologist and Head of Cardiovascular Research at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. She is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, a Senior Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada / Robert M Freedom Chair of Cardiovascular Science, and the Scientific Lead of the Cardiac Precision Medicine Program of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research. She is the Pediatric Project Co-lead and the AI/Precision Medicine Lead for the CIHR funded CHF Alliance. She is PI of an Ontario province-wide biobank for childhood onset heart disease which has over 10,000 participants. Her translational research program focusses on cardiac precision medicine that leverages genomics, pharmacogenomics and stem cell applications to model childhood heart disease and discover new therapies, as well as leverages AI and digital health technology to implement precision tools for patient care.
Dr. Sean Virani
Access Team Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Virani is Vice-President of Medical and Academic Affairs for the Provincial Health Services Authority in BC, Chief of Cardiology at Providence Health Care and Physician Program Director for the Provincial Heart Centre at St. Paul’s Hospital. He completed his internal medicine and cardiology training at UBC before embarking on a sub-specialization in heart failure and cardiac transplantation at Stanford University. He also has a Masters degree in Public Health from Columbia University with a focus on healthcare management. His professional interests include public policy related to health care delivery with specific reference to healthcare systems redesign and quality in the Canadian context. A key opinion leader for heart failure in Canada, Dr. Virani is Past-President of the Canadian Heart Failure Society and Co-Chair of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Heart Failure Guidelines Panel. He also serves as Medical Director for HeartLife Foundation, Canada’s first and only patient-led national heart failure organization.
Sylvain Bédard
Patient Partnership Co-Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Sylvain Bédard first heard the word transplant in 1980 when he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease that had killed his 18-year-old sister. Sylvain will have to struggle and survive with new health technologies for 20 years before receiving the gift of life. Heart transplanted in 2000, in December 2004, he became the first heart transplant recipient in history to climb over 6000m in Bolivia, on Mount Sajama, accompanied by his cardiologist. In 2018, Sylvain had a second heart transplant after a 4-year wait. Since 2016, Sylvain is a patient partner at the CEPPP (Centre of Excellence on Partnership with Patients and the Public), patient coordinator on several Canadian research platforms (CDTRP, CHF Alliance, Platform P.P. of the CHUM), member of the executive committee of the Quebec Heart Failure Society and executive member of the Canadian Heart Function Alliance. Co-investigator or collaborator on more than 10 projects: on clinical trial projects and projects to improve the impact of research care partnerships, he also collaborates on digital health projects, with the FQRS, MSSS in digital transformation, he is also a member of the CHUM Augmented Intelligence Tactical Committee.
Dr. Anique Ducharme
Associate Scientific Director
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Anique Ducharme is a Professor of Medicine at Université de Montréal and associate director of the Canadian Heart Function Alliance. She is a chair holder of the University of Montreal’s Fondation Marcelle et Jean Coutu & Cal and Janine Moisan for best practices in advanced Heart Failure. She is the founder and Director of the Heart Failure Clinic at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) and former president of the Canadian Heart Failure Society. She was the recent Scientific Program Committee Chair for the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) annual congress (2018-2020) where she implemented a mandatory 3G politics to promote diversity in terms of gender, geography and generation and led the pivot from a in-person to a fully virtual meeting. She has also been involved in the CCS Heart Failure Guidelines Committee since 2006. Lastly, she is the program director for the Université de Montréal Advanced Heart Failure and Cardiac transplantation fellowship program and the current co-chair on the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) on the evaluation of the transplant candidates. Her clinical and research focus is on advanced heart failure, including remodeling, pharmacological and device therapies (cardiac resynchronization therapy, percutaneous valvular interventions, pulmonary pressure monitoring, mechanical assist devices and transplantation).
Dr. Aamir Jeewa
Pediatric Team Co-Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Aamir Jeewa completed training in Paediatric Cardiology at British Columbia Children’s Hospital in Vancouver followed by a clinical fellowship in Heart Function and Transplantation at SickKids. In 2011, he was then appointed as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Staff Cardiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital. While there, Dr. Jeewa was the Medical Director of the Ventricular Assist Device program and Fellowship Director for Advanced Training in Heart Failure and Transplantation at Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Jeewa returned to SickKids in 2016 as the Section Head of the Cardiomyopathy & Heart Function Program within the Division of Paediatric Cardiology and was later appointed the Medical Director of the Ventricular Assist Device program in 2018 and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto in 2019.
Dr. Philip Joseph
Translational Team Co-Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Philip Joseph obtained his M.D. at Western University in 2004. His internal medicine (2004-2007) and cardiology (2007-2010) residencies were completed at the University of Ottawa. He completed an M.Sc. in Health Research Methodology at McMaster in 2013. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at McMaster University, and an investigator at the Population Health Research Institute. His research interests include global health and heart failure. He aims to study determinants of heart failure development and progression as a co-investigator in the PURE and G-CHF studies. He is the principal investigator of the COLT-HF study, which will separately examine the impacts of colchicine and thiamine in patients with heart failure secondary to ischemic heart disease.
Dr. Anthony Tang
Digital Health Platform Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Anthony Tang began his career as a family doctor in Northern Ontario before becoming an internationally recognized clinician-scientist with a research focus on cardiac arrhythmia. He was the British Columbia Provincial Heart Rhythm Medical Director (2010-13). Dr. Anthony Tang is Professor of Medicine at Western University and Adjunct Professor of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Tang is presently Staff Electrophysiologist, Division of Cardiology, London Health Science Centre. Dr. Tang's clinical and research expertise is on the diagnosis and treatment of patients with cardiac arrhythmia, particularly in heart failure patients. He has conducted multi-national, multicentre clinical trials in the last 15 years. Dr. Tang is an internationally renowned researcher, has been an invited speaker at national and international meetings, and is a peer reviewer for scientific journals, as well as grant reviewer for Heart and Stroke and Canadian Institute of Health Research. Dr. Tang currently has two CIHR grants to conduct research that examines treatment options for patients in atrial fibrillation with heart failure. He is the Scientific Director for the Cardiovascular Network of Canada (CANet), which is funded by the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) from 2015-2024.
Dr. Jillianne Code
Patient Patnership
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Jillianne Code is a Canadian researcher, educator, and learning scientist specializing in learner agency, online learning technologies, and the impact of social media on student success and well-being. As the Director of the ALIVE Research Lab at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Code studies agency ‘unbundled’ from formal education, including video games, virtual reality, and social media communities. Dr. Code’s most important role, however, is that of a heart failure survivor and two-time heart transplant recipient. Following her heart transplants, to honour the efforts of her medical team and the sacrifice of her donors, Dr. Code has worked to advocate for the inclusion of patients as partners in healthcare practice and research. In 2016, Dr. Code co-founded the HeartLife Foundation with Marc Bains, Canada’s first – and only – national patient-led heart failure organization that has grown to include a network of heart failure patients across Canada. In 2022, HeartLife was awarded Effective Voice of the Year by the World Heart Federation for the Heart Failure Patient and Family Caregiver Charter, which has since been translated into 17 languages by the Global Heart Hub and endorsed by more than 30 patient organizations worldwide.
Dr. Davina Banner-Lukaris
Patient Patnership Co-Lead
Member of the Executive Committee
Dr. Davina Banner (PhD, RN) is a cardiovascular and rural health researcher, educator, and palliative care nurse. She is an associate professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Northern British Columbia, which is located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Lheidli T'enneh. Davina leads an interdisciplinary program of research exploring cardiovascular care, patient and provider experiences, and rural health service delivery. She has published and presented nationally and internationally and has a special interest in integrated knowledge translation and patient-oriented research. Dr. Banner is the Scientific Lead for the Patient Engagement and Empowerment Platform for the Canadian Heart Failure Alliance, promoting the meaningful engagement of patients and the public in research that optimizes patient and health system outcomes.
Liz Scanlon
Heart and Stroke Foundation
Member of the Executive Committee
Liz Scanlon is Vice President, Health Systems and Provincial Mission Teams at Heart & Stroke. Liz and her colleagues work with health systems leaders, health care providers, researchers and governments across the country to support health systems and policy change federally and provincially, across the continuum of care. In her career with both non-profit and private organizations in the health sector, Liz has built on her background in policy and her practice of communications and government relations to influence systems change in a range of sectors including mental health and HIV/AIDS, as well as vascular health. While at Heart & Stroke, Liz has successfully advocated for legislation to support public access to defibrillation, regulations to restrict youth access to nicotine products and funding for public awareness of the signs of stroke, among other initiatives.
Maryse Desjardins
Administrative assistant
Canadian Heart Function Alliance
Maryse Desjardins is the administrative assistant for the CHF Alliance and is also responsible for the network's finances. She works at the Montreal Heart Institute in the heart failure research team and has been Dr. Rouleau's administrative assistant for 28 years.
Leslie Hausermann
Program manager
Canadian Heart Function Alliance
Leslie Hausermann has been with the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) since 2014 and has been the Program Manager for the CHF Alliance since September 2022. She is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the network. She holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the Université de Montreal. She was the project manager for the MHI Pulmonary Vascular Diseases research group from 2017 to 2022, and has experience in ethics and regulatory affairs.