Keynote Speakers

Dr. DeBar is a clinical psychologist and behavioral health researcher whose work in recent years has focused primarily on the health care service needs of patients with chronic pain particularly those with complicating comorbid conditions. Her work includes both large scale epidemiological studies examining the impact of health care policies on patient receipt of pain-related behavioral health and complementary and integrative health care services as well as pragmatic trials of multidisciplinary biopsychosocial treatment approaches for patients with pain in primary care settings. Dr. DeBar works closely with physicians at Kaiser Permanente and other health care systems to ensure that her research findings make their way into clinical practice, and to identify real-world clinical practices that have the potential to improve service delivery through large-scale adoption of behavioral and lifestyle interventions. Dr. DeBar serves on the National Advisory Council for the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and has been the principal investigator of projects funded by NINDS, NIMH, NCCIH, NIDDK, NICHD, and PCORI.

Richard Deyo is Professor Emeritus and previously the Kaiser-Permanente Endowed Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine in the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Internal Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.  He is a Deputy Editor of Spine and a member of the Editorial Board of the Back Review Group of the Cochrane Collaboration. In 2004, he received the John M. Eisenberg Award for Career Achievement in Research from the Society of General Internal Medicine and in 2015 he received the Wiltse Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine. Dr. Deyo has a long-standing research interest in measuring patient function, involving patients in clinical decisions, and managing low back pain. He has recently been studying inappropriate use of medical technology, and the commercial, political, and media forces that affect it. The resulting book, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises was published in 2005. His second book, Watch Your Back! How the Back Pain Industry Is Costing Us More and Giving Us Less – And What You Can Do to Inform and Empower Yourself in Seeking Treatment, was published in 2014.

Barbara Neis (Ph.D., F.R.S.C, C. M.) is John Paton Lewis Distinguished University Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Based in the Department of Sociology, she is also the Co-Director of the SafetyNet Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Research, a Member of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and past president of the Canadian Association for Research on Work and Health. Professor Neis received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 1988. She has worked for three decades in multi-disciplinary teams carrying out research in marine and coastal contexts including on social and environmental change, occupational health and safety and mobile work. She is currently Project Director on an 8-year SSHRC-funded Partnership grant entitled On the Move: Employment-Related Geographical Mobility in the Canadian Context. Professor Neis is also co-chair of the Newfoundland node of a second SSHRC-funded Partnership grant, the Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy. She is a co-investigator in two modules in the Canada First Research Excellence-funded, 8-year, Ocean Frontier Institute where she is heading up research on fishing and aquaculture occupational health and safety.  

Geoff Outerbridge
World Spine Care,
Integrate Healthcare Collective, Ottawa

Geoff Outerbridge received a B.Sc. in Human Kinetics and a M.Sc. in neuroscience from the University of Guelph. He began his career working for the University of Waterloo with the Ontario Universities Back Pain Study, a research study examining the causes of back pain in industry. In 1996 he started an ergonomics consulting company to offer his knowledge and experience to clients in a wide range of environments including mining, assembly line and office. In addition to ergonomics consulting and running a personal training business, he attended the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College from which he graduated in 2001. From 2001, to 2011, Geoff owned a successful multidisciplinary health clinic in Ottawa that integrated chiropractic, massage therapy, acupuncture, naturopathy, rehabilitation, and family medicine. He sold his practice in 2011 to join World Spine Care (www.worldspinecare.org), an international non-profit organization bringing sustainable, inter-professional, evidence-based spine care to underserved regions around the world.  He moved his family to Botswana to establish WSC’s flagship clinics in Botswana, returned from Botswana in 2013 and has remained with WSC as the clinical director.  With WSC, Geoff has been involved in developing clinical and data collection protocols, prevention and education programs, and has established clinics in Botswana, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, and India.  He also continues part time in clinical practice at Integrate Healthcare Collective in Ottawa (www.integrateottawa.ca).