DiPo Out and About: Spring 2026
DiPo team members had several opportunities to share their ongoing work this spring.
DiPo has been busy this spring! Take a look at the highlights below:
MacKenna Jardine shared her art piece “Climbing Alone: An Autistic Woman’s Journey to Diagnosis and Beyond” at the Canadian Autism Leadership Summit (CALS) in April. This image represents MacKenna’s journey, which she describes as follows: “As someone who works in autism policy, I was well aware of traditional "support cliffs" — the sudden drop-off in resources that typically happens when an individual turns 18. However, when I was late-diagnosed with autism, I experienced a cliff of my own. I share this artwork in the hopes that if you have experienced a similar ‘diagnostic cliff,’ you know you are not alone and you are seen.’ You can find an image of her artwork below! MacKenna also presented a poster of her analysis of the sex and gender gap in diagnoses of autism, using administrative data from BC.
Brittany Finlay presented at the Children's Healthcare Canada Conference in June alongside parent partners Genevieve Currie and Stephanie Paravan. This session discussed the ADVANCE Network and recent research findings, and featured Genevieve and Stephanie’s perspectives on authentic and meaningful engagement and inclusion in research. Patricia Basualto and Angela Senevirathna also presented posters on their work on DiPo’s ACCESS project.
Meaghan Retizel presented a TED-Style talk at the ENRICH Conference in Banff in May. Her talk focused on the definitions of disability used to determine eligibility for income support programs in Canada, and the importance of using strengths-based language to ensure human rights principles are fully embedded in disability program design.
Ken Fyie presented his analysis of Statistics Canada data on rates of access to Canadian governmental disability supports at the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) Conference in Lethbridge in May.
Several DiPo team members presented their work at the 38th Annual Congress of the European Academy of Childhood-onset Disability (EACD) in Galway, Ireland, in June.
Janet Aucoin presented a poster at the Owerko Centre Conference discussing a scoping review of child health and wellbeing indicators in OECD countries.
Patricia Basualto was featured on an OPENPediatrics Podcast episode titled “Opening a Wider Door: Access to Services for Children with Neurodevelopmental disabilities,” where she discusses service provider perspectives system-level challenges associated with access to disability services and actionable recommendations to improve policy and program implementation. Click the button below to listen!
Sharing our work at conferences and on podcasts is an important way for our team to make connections with researchers, community members, individuals with lived experience, and other interest holders, which helps to enhance the quality and impact of our work.