Biography:

Dr. Jude Kornelsen is a health services researcher who is currently involved in two programs of research; one focusing on providing an evidence base to inform decisions on the planning of rural maternity services, the other on advancing our understanding of women’s and care provider’s attitudes and experiences of patient-initiated elective cesarean section.

As Co-Principal Investigator of the Rural Maternity Care New Emerging Team (RM-NET) and Co-Director of the Centre for Rural Health Research, Dr. Kornelsen has completed projects on women’s experiences of rural maternity care, policy implications of health care restructuring on rural maternity services, providers’ experiences of care in low-resource environments, the training and practice experience of GP Surgeons, the response of referral hospitals to the closure of smaller community maternity services and using a logic model framework to plan sustainable maternity services. She has also completed a comprehensive study on women’s experiences and decision making with patient-initiated elective cesarean section.

Current work includes the validation of a measure of rural parturient women’s stress in pregnancy, and an economic costing and multi-criteria evaluation of rural services. Additional interests include contributing to the development of research capacity in primary care with an enthusiastic interest in grant-writing. Her research activities take place within the Centre for Rural Health Research, a multidisciplinary team of investigators including community-based clinicians and policy and decision-makers at the Health Authority, Provincial and National level.

Dr. Kornelsen is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award. The Centre for Rural Health Research is supported by the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute and the Child and Family Research Institute of British Columbia, Canada.