Linda Hunter joined the Global PFPC in November 2026. Based in Ottawa, Canada, she brings a valuable perspective shaped by both her lived experience as a patient and her professional background in healthcare leadership, research, and patient engagement. Linda has lived with chronic pain for more than 20 years and has personal experience with spinal stenosis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and degenerative disc disease. She is also a care partner to her mother, who lives with end-stage Alzheimer’s disease. These experiences inform her deep commitment to ensuring that patients, families, and care partners are heard, valued, and meaningfully included in healthcare and research.
Linda serves as a Patient Engagement Lead Consultant with Bruyère Health Research Institute, where she leads patient partnerships in national and international projects focused on life expectancy and risk calculators. Her work brings the voices and perspectives of people living with cardiac and brain diseases into research and supports patients as active partners in the co-design and co-leadership of research initiatives.
A retired executive healthcare leader and former Chief Nurse Executive, Linda began her career as an intensive care nurse and brings more than 40 years of local, national, and international healthcare experience. Her career has spanned clinical practice, education, research, and administration across the continuum of care, with expertise in quality improvement, patient safety and human factors, and performance measurement.
Over the past decade, Linda has dedicated much of her work to advancing meaningful patient engagement and partnership. Her contributions include disease-specific patient engagement initiatives, co-design with patient and community partners, research framework development, and building clinical research competencies for patient and community partners. She is an alumna of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Patient Engagement Research Ambassador (PERA) program. Linda has also co-developed online Patient Engagement in Research learning modules for patients and researchers, with courses focused on participation, partnership, advocacy, and leadership.
Linda holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a Master of Science in Nursing. She also pursued doctoral studies in Nursing, reaching PhD candidacy before chronic illness required her to step away from her studies. Through her lived experience and extensive professional background, Linda brings an important perspective to the Global PFPC and a strong commitment to advancing healthcare that recognizes the expertise of patients, families, and care partners and places their voices at the center of decision-making.
