Conference Schedule Day 1

Bio: Dr. Alan Batt is an internationally recognized health systems scholar whose work has shaped how health professions approach competency frameworks, evolve scopes of practice, and develop equitable models of care. His work bridges clinical practice, education, policy, and research – to date, spanning ten countries and five continents – with a focus on professional competency, health workforce evolution, and equitable healthcare delivery. He leads the development of key pan-Canadian frameworks, informs international frameworks, chairs national committees, and contributes to evidence-informed transformation of health systems.

In addition to teaching and mentoring emerging scholars, he serves in academic leadership roles internationally. He supervises doctoral research candidates advancing conceptual and system-level understanding of evolving professional roles, workforce evolution, and health system integration.

Dr. Batt’s efforts are focused on collaborative leadership, building research capacity, and translating knowledge into meaningful policy and practice improvements.

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Bio: Alisa Johnson, PhD, LMT, is a researcher, administrator, educator, advocate, and massage therapist who currently serves as Director of the Pain Research Center at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health. She earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in experimental psychology with a concentration in health psychology from Baylor University, where her work focused on improving chronic illness symptoms through mind-body medicine approaches. During her predoctoral fellowship, she developed foundational expertise in biopsychosocial contributors to health and disease.

Dr. Johnson completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Florida’s Pain Research and Intervention Center of Excellence, specializing in neuroscience, pain science, and advanced clinical research methods. As a Research Professor at the University of Florida, she led and collaborated on multidisciplinary studies examining the biological, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms underlying individual differences in chronic pain and responses to treatment. Her recent research emphasizes the role of muscle quality as a potential driver of musculoskeletal pain and highlights the importance of psychological health in shaping pain outcomes.

A licensed massage therapist since 1999, Dr. Johnson has served patients ages 8 to 90 with diverse pain conditions and wellness goals, and holding licensure in four states. She is deeply committed to advancing the field of massage therapy through rigorous research, evidence-informed practice, and education.

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Bio: Kjartan Fersum is an internationally renowned physiotherapist, educator, lecturer and researcher with a keen interest in pain disorder & management, utilising cognitive functional therapy (CFT) in his daily practise for the betterment of his patients. He integrates CFT into his daily practise, utilising it with chronic and acute pain patients to help them navigate their problems and its role within physiotherapy. Kjartan provides methods one can easily take into your daily practise to improve your communication with your patient as well as help the progress on their journey of rehabilitation, stepping out of the “I will fix you” mentality and more into a therapeutic alliance *with* the patient.

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Note that Dr. Fersum is appearing remotely due to an injury that has prevented him from travelling to the conference.

Bio: Greg Lehman is a practicing physiotherapist, researcher and educator in Toronto, Canada with over 20 years experience in the rehabilitation field. Greg’s background includes a MSc in Spine Biomechanics, MSc in Physiotherapy and a Chiropractic degree. Greg has published more than 20 peer reviewed publications in the manual therapy and exercise science fields. He has a special interest in the multidimensional nature of pain and injury and believes that simple yet comprehensive approaches are a cornerstone of the biopsychosocial approach to patient care. Greg has taught the popular “Reconciling Biomechanics with Pain Science” course for 10 years to 1000s of therapists throughout the world. The course is about fundamentals and finding the common threads of many rehabilitation approaches.

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