Health Consultant

 Karen Pyra

I graduated from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Science in Health Education in 1988, and again with a Masters of Public Administration in 1998.  I was studying health promotion at Dalhousie when the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion was published.  Since that time, the Ottawa Charter has served as a foundation for my health promotion practice, helping to shape my career focus on health policy and evaluation.

I began my career in the non-profit health sector, with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia and AIDS Nova Scotia.  I then held numerous roles within the Nova Scotia Department of Health, including Research Officer for the Nova Scotia Advisory Commission on AIDS, AIDS Advisor to the Minster of Health, Policy Analyst and Senior Policy Analyst for the Legislative and Policy Development Section and Policy Coordinator for the Primary Health Care Section.  I left the Department of Health to become the Prevention Coordinator at Cancer Care Nova Scotia, where I had the opportunity to become involved in a number of collaborative initiatives focused on building community capacity for health promotion.  For example, I was part of the team that created the ACT Tobacco Program, which has inspired many exciting tobacco prevention initiatives around the province.  I was also a founding co-chair of the Nova Scotia Alliance for Healthy Eating and Physical Activity, a coalition of many organizations working together to support collaborative capacity building.

In 2001, I started Pyra Management Consulting Services Inc. (PMCS), which is a management consulting firm that provides policy development and analysis, program evaluation, strategic planning and project management services, mostly within the health sector.  I continue to be very involved in many aspects of health promotion practice, such as designing and conducting program evaluations for non-profit and public sector organizations.  Effective writing is a cornerstone of my work at PMCS.  I prepare a wide variety of written documents, such as evaluation reports, briefing notes, policy documents, research proposals, literature reviews and environmental scans for various provincial, regional and national organizations.  My services are also in demand as a facilitator for consensus building workshops, consultation sessions and strategic planning sessions.  I also provide training workshops in the areas of evaluation, focus group moderation, writing briefing materials and policy documents, advocacy planning and facilitation.

I believe the foundation of health promotion practice as outlined in the Ottawa Charter is as relevant today as it was in 1988.  As we learn more about the impact of the social determinants of health and health inequities on populations, we as health promoters will continued to be guided and challenged by the Ottawa Charter to promote health in meaningful and effective ways.