Dr. Patricia Janssen, CEO, SmartParent Mobile Health
Category: Executive

“Dr. Janssen is passionate in her commitment to fostering health and well-being among new families. She has succeeded in creating a public health program that has been adopted and endorsed by provincial and national organizations and is currently receiving inquiries from other Canadian provinces and territories and other countries.”

Dr. Janssen is a Professor in the University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health. She is a Perinatal Epidemiologist and Senior Scientist at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Her clinical training is in nursing and midwifery. She has an MPH in maternal child health and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Washington. Dr. Janssen leads a Centre of Research Excellence entitled Advancing the Science of Physiologic Birth. Patricia is currently studying the utility of SMS text messaging as a modality to improve health literacy and motivate health behavior change among expectant and new parents. Most recently, she has developed and implemented SmartParent, Canada’s first prenatal and parent education program delivered by text messaging. She is a past recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Research in the Sciences and in 2020 was named one of the top 50 Changemakers in Public Health among alumni of the University of Washington School of Public Health. She was recognized by UBC in 2022 with a Faculty of Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award for Service to the University and Community.

As CEO of SmartParent, Dr. Janssen has introduced the first prenatal and parenting education program in Canada delivered via text messaging. Today only 30% of Canadians attend prenatal education classes. SmartParent has overcomes barriers to education including poverty, rural or remote location, fatigue of working parents, lack of instructors, stigma among marginalized populations, and COVID restrictions, with a solution that delivers critically needed information to people’s phones. In 2024, SmartParent reached a milestone of 22,000 users in BC. Dr. Janssen’s long standing reputation as one of Canada’s leading perinatal epidemiologists, along with her 25 years of experience in nursing, has opened doors as she begins to scale the program across Canada. With a highly successful launch in Nova Scotia in 2024 and others underway in the Atlantic provinces and Ontario, Dr. Janssen has demonstrated her effectiveness as a changemaker. She leads through respect for and engagement with her colleagues, a commitment to serving marginalized populations, an ability to view a challenge from multiple viewpoints, and a fearless enthusiasm for innovation.