Naomi Parker works as the Senior Operating Officer at PolicyWise for Children & Families. In this role Naomi seeks to inform, identify, and promote effective social policy and practice to improve the well-being of children, families, and communities. Simply put, Naomi works to promote better evidence for better decisions.

Naomi’s research interest lies in how collaborative service delivery between primary and mental healthcare can be implemented and adapted across contexts and settings while achieving common outcomes. Much is known about the essential ingredients, facilitators, and barriers to collaborative services delivery. Despite all that is known, often such collaborative approaches fail. Recent evidence indicates that failures are due to a lack of understanding of contextual factors and influences, complexity, and implementation processes. Naomi would like to develop a deep understanding of the outcomes, underlying mechanisms and context that contribute to successful collaborative service delivery between primary and mental healthcare. In other words, to answer the question: ‘what works for whom, in what circumstances, and how?’.

Naomi has a Bachelor Arts, Sociology from University of Calgary (2004) and a Masters of Business Administration from Heriot Watt University (2011).