Timothy Disher is a registered nurse and doctoral student studying at the School of Nursing, Dalhousie University. Tim was recently awarded a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship to support his study of the cost-effectiveness of single family room care in a Canadian Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

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As a founder and director of a community music program for homeless and at-risk adults, Tim developed a passion for addressing health inequity. This was further developed through his work as a postpartum nurse, where he advocated for improvement of care of groups that had become marginalized. He has continued his advocacy role as a member of his school’s graduate student affairs committee and a neonatal abstinence syndrome working group at his local hospital.

 

Nursing has a long history of bearing witness to health inequities, and as a result have developed a professional identity that is particularly concerned with capturing the full consequences of healthcare decisions. Timothy is passionate that this lens is a natural complement to the field of health economics, which has developed powerful methods to weigh the value of healthcare decisions but typically do so from a narrower perspective.

 

Tim’s doctoral research will examine how a shift to family-centred care paradigms in neonatal intensive care may introduce health inequities. This may come a result of shifted burden to parents and potentially adverse outcomes in infants whose families cannot reside within the hospital.

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