Liz is a first-rate health researcher and program evaluator. We have worked together on numerous traditionally funded and contract-based research/ evaluation projects over the past 10 years. These projects have spanned regional health needs assessment, health services performance measure development and application, health program planning and evaluation and systematic literature synthesis. They have involved all stages of the research process from initial consultation, needs identification, goal setting, study design, measures operationalization, design of data collection processes, supervision and training of field staff, data analysis and interpretation, through write-up and presentation.

Liz is equally at home with academically oriented projects and practice-based projects. Her strengths span the full range of study tasks but she is particularly adept at finding ways to achieve scientific rigor that work in practice settings. She is also enormously capable in communicating to all stakeholders including professionals from policy-makers through front-line clinical staff as well as patients/clients and their families. She has extensive experience with client populations including children and youth, adults with the spectrum of mental disorders, adults receiving forensic services, the homeless and in crisis, adults with cognitive impairment, and seniors with multiple and complex health issues. Her objective in each project is to involve all stakeholders such that valuable capacity for further research or evaluation activity remains after the project is formally over. In working with abstract concepts, Liz has excellent synthesis skills and can easily extract the most important and cutting-edge issues from both the literature and is enormously intuitive and anticipatory about how these issues might manifest in practice settings. She is among those rare individuals who can work effectively with both the minute details of a project and its broad implications and overall significance.

In addition to research skills, Liz also brings valuable personal characteristics to her work. She is dedicated to excellence and will give all it takes to see every project through to successful completion. She has a solid work ethic and applies her full energies to each task. She is uncompromising with respect to both the quality of her work and ethical research practice. She works tirelessly for the betterment of individual lives and the community, independent of external incentives.

Liz Simpson has implemented independent evaluation for two projects in which I have held the role of project coordinator. These projects are The Elnora Primary Health Care Project and the Nurse/Physician Collaborative Partnership Project. Liz's contribution through project evaluation has demonstrated excellence in capacity building of project outcomes. Liz articulates concise and succinct summation of data and interprets implications from the data that supports or defers from project goals. Liz's knowledge utilization in providing critical feedback to the project has been a tremendous asset to both of these projects. In the role of independent evaluator, Liz consistently employs rigorous standardized data collection mechanisms and is involved in seeking project membership confirmation of project goals and outcomes through in-depth evaluation mechanisms such as logic models. I would welcome an opportunity to work with Liz Simpson as an independent evaluator, a very valuable opportunity.