Meet our Keynote Presenters
The IFNC15 Conference Planning Committee is pleased to announce our three Keynote Speakers.
Professor Mary McCarron, PhD RNID RGN BNS FTCD is Professor of Ageing and Intellectual Disability, Director of the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability (TCAID) and Executive Director of the National Intellectual Disability Memory Service. Professor McCarron has held many senior leadership roles in Trinity College including Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Professor McCarron is a recognized international leader in the fields of intellectual disability, ageing, dementia and palliative care. She is the founder and Principal Investigator for IDS-TILDA, the longitudinal comparative study on ageing in persons with intellectual disability, a global first. IDS-TILDA increases understanding about how lives and chronic conditions change over time for this population. Prof McCarron is also a champion of patient and public involvement in research (PPI) and IDS-TILDA continues to provide PPI opportunities for people with intellectual disability.
Professor McCarron has led a longitudinal cohort study in the area of dementia in people with Down syndrome spanning over 25 years. Her special interest in this area has driven to development of Ireland’s first dedicated National Memory Service for people with an intellectual disability, which has been developed in partnership with Tallaght University Hospital, Daughters of Charity Disability Support Service and TCAID. She has been a key advisor on ageing and policy issues to various governmental and other groups at a national and international level. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, an active member of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IASSIDD), a visiting Professor at Duke University School of Nursing, North Carolina and, in 2019, was voted the recipient of the inaugural HRB Impact Award. She has over 150 publications and secured in excess on €10 million in research funding.
Kim Usher, AM, RN, PhD, FACMHN, FACN, Professor Kim Usher is an experienced researcher with a commitment to co-designed and collaborative research that has a meaningful community impact. Recently, Kim has undertaken research and published on issues related to family violence. Kim is the lead researcher on a Medical Research Future Fund Bushfire funded grant to investigate the effect of arts-based storytelling workshops on mental health recovery and NSW Health Covid-19 funded grant to explore the impact of COVID-19 on preventive health behaviors in Indigenous communities.
She is also the NSW lead on an Australian Research Council grant on Aboriginal young person wellbeing and resilience. She is the current Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and supervised a large number of PhD students, and is a Fellow of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses and the Australian College of Nursing.
Inger Kristensson Hallström, RSCN, ETP, FEANS, Professor of Paediatric Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, is a Full Professor and Head of the Research group Child and Family Health at the Department of Health Sciences at Lund University since 20 years. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a pediatric nurse, department director and health care developer at the Children’s University Hospital in Lund. In 2008, she became the first professor of pediatric nursing in Sweden and received the award of Excellent Teaching Practitioner at Lund University. Her research is primarily about children with long-term illness and their families. Special focus is on care for children in their homes, the development and use of eHealth in care, promotion of health in early childhood, and the development of knowledge and complex interventions to implement a Child Centered Care. Her research generates knowledge about the entire family when a child in the family becomes ill, how the care and treatment affect the family’s life over time. She has over 140 publications in peer-reviewed journals reflecting the focus of her research.
Her research has shown significant impact for children living with long term illness. Her research is also important for health care organizations as they can provide better care at less cost, for example through home-based care and eHealth. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the eChildHealth research program, a six-year research program funded by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research and dedicated to develop eHealth as an aid for facilitating and supporting self-management in families with long-term childhood illness.
