Colleagues - Halifax Obesity Network

Jenna Crown, PDt

Jenna Crown is a Registered Dietitian working with the Weight Loss Surgery and Endocrinology Team at the QEӀӀ Health Sciences Centre. Jenna has always had a passion for nutrition and all things food related which is why she chose to pursue a career in dietetics. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Applied Human Nutrition with Integrated Internship Program from Mount Saint Vincent University. Since then, she has worked for several years in a number of different settings including Public Health and Primary Health Care where she helped people work towards their personal health and nutrition goals through group-based nutrition education programs, cooking classes, grocery store tours and individualized nutrition counseling. In her spare time, Jenna can be found testing out new recipes, tending to her vegetable garden or staying active and enjoying the outdoors throughout all seasons.

James Ellsmere, MD MSc FRCSC

Dr James Ellsmere is the Head of the Division General and Gastrointestinal Surgery at Dalhousie University. He completed his undergraduate in electrical engineering, medical school and residency at Dalhousie and clinical fellowships in Minimally Invasive Surgery and Therapeutic Endoscopy from Harvard Medical School. He holds a Masters in Medical Informatics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr Ellsmere was appointed to Dalhousie University in 2007 and is currently an Associate Professor of Surgery. His research program is focused on developing and evaluating novel techniques to improve the management of gastrointestinal and metabolic disease. His clinical practice is devoted to Gastrointestinal Surgery, Bariatric Surgery and Therapeutic Endoscopy. He is the co-director of the Nova Scotia Health Bariatric program and the clinical lead for QEII Health Science Centre ERCP program. He is the program director of the Advanced Gastrointestinal Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship at Dalhousie.

Kara Evers, NP

Kara Evers is a Nurse Practitioner with the Weight Loss Surgery Program at the QEII Health Sciences Centre. Kara completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and her Master of Nursing at Dalhousie University. She worked as a Registered Nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth General Hospital and then as a primary care Nurse Practitioner at Musquodoboit Valley Family Practice. It was while working in primary health care that she developed an interest in managing chronic diseases including metabolic syndrome, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. Kara combines her interests in education and health promotion by supporting patients in achieving healthy weight loss.

Tom Ransom, MD FRCSC

Dr Tom Ransom is a staff endocrinologist at the QEII Health Sciences Centre and is an assistant professor of medicine at Dalhousie University. Prior to the study of medicine, he obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Toronto in nutrition with the focus of his master’s research and thesis on the effects of diet on cholesterol and diabetes control. He stayed in Toronto to study medicine and internal medicine before moving to Halifax where he obtained his fellowship in endocrinology. He enjoys his teaching responsibilities and is active in both basic and clinical research with an emphasis on the metabolic syndrome which includes diabetes, obesity, and dyslipidemias.

Tiffany Shepherd, Health Psychologist

Dr. Tiffany Shepherd is a Health Psychologist who provides services to the Weight Loss Surgery program, as well as other services including diabetes and gastroenterology departments. She completed her PhD in clinical psychology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC in 2018 and completed her clinical residency training here in Halifax at the QEII in 2015. Dr. Shepherd has interests in the areas of health behaviour change and chronic disease and obesity management and is currently developing group-based psychological interventions to support obesity management.

Richard Spence, Surgeon

Dr. Richard Spence is an assistant Professor in Minimally Invasive Surgery and Surgical Oncology in the Division of General Surgery in Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. Dr Spence is a South African and Canadian trained general surgeon with research interests focusing on standardizing reporting of surgical outcomes with the vision to provide global benchmarking platforms and quality improvement initiatives, specifically, in the fascinating and progressive fields of bariatric surgery and gastrointestinal malignancies. Dr Spence also has a passion for delivering on patient-centered outcomes research and trying to measure surgical outcomes, which matter most to his patient by actively engaging them in his research. Dr Spence has been innovative in trying to reliably measure outcomes on a larger scale by embracing both emerging mobile health technology as well as patient reported data to minimize costs, data burden and missing data. He is very motivated to try increase access to quality bariatric surgery for patients with morbid obesity in Nova Scotia.

Highlights of his academic career to date include that he was the recipient of the Mary Gray scholarship to Cambridge University where he studied a Master of Public Health, the recipient of the Moynihan Research award for best surgical research in residency and the recipient of the Discovery Health Academic fellowship award, which funded his PhD studies and fellowship at the Codman Center for Clinical Effectiveness at Harvard University.

Riley Stewart, Surgeon

Dr. Riley Stewart is a surgeon for the Weight Loss Program. He practices at Dartmouth General Hospital and is an associate professor for Dalhousie University. At Dartmouth General Hospital, the focus is on low-risk bariatric surgery patients. Stewart completed his residency training in general surgery at Dalhousie University. He has fellowship training in minimally invasive surgery and bariatric surgery from Dalhousie University and fellowship training in advanced endoscopy from Harvard University.