Speaker

Leah M. Stephenson, strategic lead, All.Can Canada

Motivated by her experiences as a caregiver for her late mother, a Filipina-Canadian physician who overcame poverty, war, gender discrimination, meningioma and chronic pain before losing her battle against recurrent endometrial cancer, Leah M. Stephenson has cultivated her consulting expertise to improve how we address complex systems change — as leaders, organizations and collaborators. She’s the strategic lead of All.Can Canada, a patient-led, multi-stakeholder network focused on improving earlier, equitable cancer diagnoses in Canada.

For more than 20 years, Stephenson has been working to improve Canadian health-care systems to better address the needs of people using them, including — and especially — structurally underserved communities. Nationally, she has supported advocacy and improvements in treatment access and continues to advocate for pan-Canadian, interoperable, equity-informed and community-governed health information. She worked for five years in Ontario’s health-care system advocating for equity-focused and community-governed primary health-care teams, as well as integrated, responsive and accessible community health hubs.

On top of driving All.Can Canada’s efforts towards earlier cancer diagnoses, she has been the backbone support and pen behind numerous transformational common agendas, including the Declaration of Personal Health Data Rights in Canada endorsed by more than 30 Canadian patient and caregiver groups and the Diversity and Inclusion Charter of Peel endorsed by more than 100 institutions, both of which continue to be brought to life through advocacy, education and knowledge mobilization.