Beyond the Diagnosis: The Future of Neurodiversity (In person, Toronto)

Progress in brain health research is easy to underestimate, until you zoom out. Year to year, the steps can feel small. But over a decade, the change is profound: new discoveries, new treatments, and a fundamental shift in how society understands conditions that affect millions of people. The Evolution of Brain Health traces that longer arc across three talks, each focusing on a single topic to explore how far we've come, what the science tells us today, and where it's taking us next.

For decades, neurodevelopmental conditions were studied and treated in silos. A growing body of research is changing that, looking across diagnoses to uncover shared patterns in biology and behaviour and opening the door to treatments and care that are more precise, more effective, and built for the full spectrum of human neurodiversity.

Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou, Program Manager of the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Disorders (POND) Network, will walk us through how that science is evolving. Joining her is POND Patient Advisory Committee member Allison Chang bringing lived experience into the conversation to explore what this shift means for the people it serves.

Speakers:

Evdokia Anagnostou, MD

Researcher * POND Network

• Evdokia Anagnostou, MD is Vice President of Research and Director of the Bloorview Research Institute. As a child neurologist, she studies the different biologies (from genes to brain structure function) underlying neurodevelopmental conditions. Dr. Anagnostou is a Senior Clinician Scientist, Professor, Department of Paediatrics, University of Toronto, and co-director of the POND program, where she co-leads several national and international clinical trials.

Allison Chang, MSW, RSW

Patient Advisory Committee * POND Network

• Allison Chang is a doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, where she holds a Doctoral Research Fellowship. Her work focuses on neurodevelopmental conditions, with a particular interest in autism and ADHD that occur together. She has been a long-standing member of the POND Network's Patient Advisory Committee, examining quality-of-life measures for autistic young adults, and is part of an OBI-funded initiative building a national network for children and youth with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Moderator:

• Dr. Jordan Antflick is the Head of Integrated Discovery at the Ontario Brain Institute. Jordan holds an Honours BSc in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Leslie Dan Faculty of Ph*rm*cy at the University of Toronto, where he also completed the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience.