Catherine E. Tong

Catherine E. Tong, PhD, is a Senior Researcher with the Centre for Health Care Research and Innovation (CHRCI) at Conestoga College, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo. Catherine works with students, seniors, and community partners to improve the health and wellbeing of older adults, with a dedicated emphasis on racialized and foreign-born older Canadians. She does this primarily by engaging in community-based and patient- oriented research, employing mixed and qualitative methodologies. Her work is driven by two things: a passion for doing health care research that reflects the diversity of our aging population, and a desire to support students, and get them excited and engaged, as they prepare for careers working with older people.

With ethnicity and aging as the anchor, she has supported and led studies on: home and community care; workforce development in the elder care sector; mobility and physical activity (using accelerometry & walking interviews); geriatric models of care; implementation science (including cultural adaptions); and multilingual and accessible research design.  One of her most recent studies, understanding health care experiences and patient engagement with racialized older adults, was conducted in nine languages. As a supervisor or committee member, she has supported more than 25 students, many of whom have completed multilingual data collection in their respective and ethnoculturally diverse communities.

Catherine completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia, in the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program (Home Department Family Medicine). She then went on to work as a Research Scientist with the Geriatric Health Systems Research Group at the University of Waterloo (2018-2023), where she also taught several courses on health and aging. She was recognised with the School of Public Health Sciences Teaching Award in 2023.