For many, the path to university is a straight line from high school. For Dana Simpson, it was a winding adventure filled with surf, snow, and working in the trades. Today, she is a PhD student tackling some of the most profound questions in healthcare access and end-of-life care.
Her journey proves that it is never too late to pivot—and that Algoma University is the perfect place to do it.
By age 29, Dana was working as an electrical apprentice. But during her lunch breaks on active construction sites, she could be found with a psychology textbook propped open on her knees, daydreaming about the classroom.
“I kept wondering if it was too late to go back to school,” Dana recalls. “Then someone said to me, ‘the time will pass anyway.’ That landed, and the decision was made.”
When she arrived at Algoma University, she found exactly what she had been searching for. The small class sizes fostered the rich, back-and-forth dialogue she had craved. Dana threw her energy into her studies and campus life, building deep friendships and immersing herself in the community.
During her time at Algoma U, a personal tragedy fundamentally altered the trajectory of Dana’s academic career. Her vibrant, independent grandmother (“Nana”) was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Witnessing the painful experience her family endured surrounding end-of-life care decisions sparked a deep, burning question within Dana.
“Losing her, and seeing what that decision-making did to us and to her, changed what I wanted to spend my life on,” Dana says. “I needed to understand how families navigated this process… and whether there was anything I could do to help others experience it differently.”
Dana approached Dr. Arthur Perlini to supervise an independent research project on the roots of conflict in shared end-of-life decision-making. That project built the foundation for her honour’s thesis on facilitated group end-of-life decision-making and launched a defining mentorship.
“Arthur became my mentor, then one of my closest friends,” says Dana, noting that they still do weekly “walk-and-talks” today. “He was the one who made me believe I could do a PhD and build a career around this work. Having a mentor like that can change the course of your life. Algoma U’s size and culture made that foundational relationship possible.”
Since graduating in 2020, Dana has built her expertise in layers. After completing an MSc in Aging and Health at Queen’s University—where she focused on the barriers faced by family caregivers of people dying at home—she shifted her focus toward equitable access to care. She also completed her training as a mediator, noting that communication was the key to understanding the layers in how that access is realized.
Now pursuing her PhD in Health Sciences at Carleton University, her doctoral project, titled “Voices at the Threshold,” partners with patients and family caregivers facing advanced illness and social vulnerability. By exploring their experiences of first end-of-life conversations and co-designing “digital stories” with families, Dana aims to bring these real-world experiences directly into clinician trainee workshops to complement their communication training and enhance empathy.
Her commitment to equity is already making waves. Recently, under the guidance of her PhD supervisor, Dana led the STROBE-Equity key informant study, collaborating with 39 co-authors across 11 countries. The resulting paper is now in press at the International Journal for Equity in Health.
In a beautiful, full-circle twist, Dana is also currently working as a Research Assistant on the Nurturing Algoma project at Algoma Public Health. “It has felt like a full-circle shift to focus on questions about our earliest-life after being immersed in thinking about the end for so many years,” she reflects.
The Algoma U Advantage & Looking Forward
For Dana, the greatest lesson is that research is a team sport. “Algoma U taught me that research is something you do with other people, not on your own,” she says.
“That collaborative way of working is still how I approach everything. The work is more meaningful when we have those we seek to serve at the table with us.”
Eventually, Dana hopes to return to the head of the classroom at a small university just like Algoma, carrying forward the legacy of mentorship and dialogue that changed her own life.
When asked what advice she would give to current students trying to find their own path, Dana circles back to the philosophy that started it all:
“Think in long time horizons. A PhD, a career, a body of work – they all sound impossibly far away until you remember that the years are coming whether you spend them on something that matters to you or not.
And if you’re trying to figure out what your ‘niche’ is, picture yourself walking into the most expansive, magical bookstore. What section do you go to? What specific topic do you reach for? That’s a clue. Follow it.”
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