Biography

Dr. Newton received her BScN from McMaster University in 1999. She went on to begin her MSc at McMaster and transferred to the PhD program in Clinical Health Sciences (Nursing) a year later focussing her research on mental illness in women and children. She completed her doctoral studies in 2004 with concurrent studies in McMaster’s Clinical Behavioural Sciences Program (Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences) where she trained as a cognitive behavioural therapist. She travelled west in 2005 to the University of Alberta to complete a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in knowledge translation and has since developed a research program in pediatric emergency mental health care with an appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta. The goal of her CCHCSP research is to: (i) increase access to appropriate and timely emergency mental health care; (ii) identify the impact of specialized mental health personnel in emergency care; and (iii) investigate how best to manage mental illness and addictions needs at an acute care system point. She is also co-leading a national effort to develop research capacity in emergency mental health care.

Dr. Newton has received post-doctoral fellowship awards from CIHR and the Canadian Health Services Foundation and grants from national funding agencies including CIHR and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. Her work has been published in clinical psychology journals such as Cognitive Therapy and Research and knowledge translation journals such as Implementation Science.