Iwona Bielska

Assistant Professor (Part-Time), Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact

0000-0002-4186-4871

Dr. Iwona Bielska is an epidemiologist and health services researcher with work experience in academic and government settings. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management, Institute of Public Health at Jagiellonian University, as well as an Assistant Professor (Part-Time) in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact (HEI), Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University. Dr. Bielska completed a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded Health System Impact Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of HEI and the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA) at McMaster University. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the Department of Public Health Sciences at Queen’s University. Dr. Bielska is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP). Previously, she held the position of Lead for Business Intelligence and Analytics at Ontario Health.

Currently, Dr. Bielska is the Principal Investigator of a research project examining high use of the emergency department, co-funded by the Polish National Science Centre and the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement through the POLONEZ BIS Grant, undertaken at Jagiellonian University. Dr. Bielska is knowledgeable about health data analytics to support the equitable distribution of health resources, monitoring of health system performance, health systems planning, and hospital capacity assessments in response to system pressures. Through her employment and education, Dr. Bielska has developed a broad understanding of the public health system across numerous jurisdictions. She has experience conducting quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as analyzing and interpreting research findings from large clinical databases, administrative datasets, and population health surveys.