Research & Supervisory Interests  

I am Professor Emeritus in the Department, having left McMaster to become Director of the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research at Laurentian University (2012-2017). Subsequently, I moved to the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth Campus, where I am Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health, and Director of Rural Health Initiatives, at the Memory Keepers Medical Discovery Team – Health Equity. I am an applied medical anthropologist whose research concerns health equity in rural and Indigenous communities in North America, including issues of health systems access, quality of care, and cultural safety in health care.  I am specifically interested in healthy aging in rural and Indigenous communities, cognitive health, dementia, and caregiving.  With my wife and research partner, Kristen Jacklin, Ph.D., I conduct Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) aimed at understanding dementia and dementia care, developing culturally appropriate cognitive assessment tools for Indigenous people and building research infrastructure and gathering foundational data research for the Center for Community Engaged Rural Dementia and Alzheimer’s Research (CERDAR). For more information on Memory Keepers go to: https://memorykeepersmdt.com.