Barbara Pimento
Barb has been involved in the early childhood profession since 1975. She was faculty at Lambton College (Sarnia) until 1983, and faculty/coordinator in The School of Early Childhood at George Brown College (GBC, Toronto) for almost 30 years. Barb has participated in numerous health related initiatives, journal articles, committees, projects and campaigns, ranging in issues of child maltreatment, physical activity, nutrition, and occupational health. Her focus has been in areas of health promotion inter-professional education. Barb is the co-author of Healthy Foundations in Early Childhood Settings with Deborah Kernested (5 editions, since 1994). She is married to Michael, and they have adult daughters, Taryn and Taylor. Barb's educational background includes an Ontario Early Childhood Education Diploma (RECE), an honours B.A. in Psychology, and a Masters in Health Science (Health Promotion). Presently Barb is working as a health promotion specialist in Health Sciences, GBC.
Deborah Lee Kernested, R.N.
Deborah Kernested has been a nurse for more than 40 years. Deborah’s experience with children and nursing began during her university years where she spent four summers as the camp nurse for children (and adults) with a disability. For the fifth summer, Deborah was hired by the University of Winnipeg’s Infant Care Centre to develop fact sheets on common childhood illnesses for families. It was this work that changed the trajectory of her career. As Project Coordinator, Deborah had the invaluable opportunity to travel across Canada working with groups of Early Childhood Learning and Care (ECLC) educators, instructors, and policy makers, public health staff, and paediatricians to write and publish the ground-breaking Well Beings (first edition) for the Canadian Paediatric Society. Deborah has experience teaching ECLC health and safety classes for RRC Polytech (Winnipeg) and George Brown College (Toronto). She has also written health articles for the Manitoba Child Care Association and Canadian Child Care Federation. It was during the development of Well Beings where Deborah and Barb Pimento first met and worked together. This collaboration led to the writing and publication of their first edition of Healthy Foundations in Child Care in 1996 and the following six editions of Healthy Foundations in Early Childhood Settings. For the last couple of decades, Deborah’s career transitioned into the area of oncology. First working as the technical writer for a medical oncology electronic medical record (EMR), which supports the delivery of systemic therapy for the treatment of cancer and is used by cancer treatment centres around the world. This work evolved into working with oncologists, nurses, support staff, and pharmacy staff in the use of this EMR at CancerCare Manitoba. Deborah’s education includes a Diploma in Nursing from the Health Sciences Centre’s School of Nursing (Winnipeg) and a Honours degree in Sociology from the University of Winnipeg.
