Biography
Dr. Beth Potter has been a faculty member in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health since 2007. She holds a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Western Ontario (2003).
Dr. Potter’s research program focuses on generating evidence to improve health care and outcomes for children with rare genetic diseases, with a specific emphasis on inherited metabolic diseases. While children with rare diseases frequently have high health care needs, the small number of patients with any one rare disease makes it challenging to launch rigorous studies and this has resulted in a sparsity of evidence to guide care. To address this evidence gap, Dr. Potter’s research program emphasizes multi-centre collaboration and developing research infrastructure to streamline methods to evaluate care. Her research is co-led by patient partners, together with health care providers, methodologists, and policy makers, to co-design studies that focus on high priority questions and that incorporate meaningful outcomes.
Dr. Potter leads INFORM RARE and the Canadian Inherited Metabolic Diseases Research Network (CIMDRN), pan-Canadian research networks that use observational studies and clinical trials to describe and evaluate outcomes, clinical interventions, and family-centred health services for children with rare diseases. She also conducts research on disease screening, particularly newborn and prenatal screening.
Since joining the University of Ottawa, Dr. Potter has taught introductory, intermediate and advanced epidemiology and survey research methods. She has supervised graduate students in Epidemiology (MSc and PhD) and Population Health (PhD).