Dr Priti Gros is a participant representative of the OBS Steering Committee. She is a physician and clinical researcher at the UHN Movement Disorders Clinic, where her work focuses on Parkinson’s Disease (a totally different clinical area). Her research has given her a deep appreciation for what it means to ask patients to participate in studies, and the trust that it requires.

When she participated in OBS during her pregnancy with her daughter, that appreciation became personal. She experienced firsthand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the kind of research she conducts. She saw participation as a way to pay it forward to other mothers and parents, just as research participants before her had made her own work possible. Her role on the committee is to bring perspectives together: engaging critically with the program as a scientist, while keeping the participant experience at the center of that work.