Ruth Cornick is the Head of Knowledge Translation at the Knowledge Translation Unit (KTU). She started working at the Unit in 2005 as guideline developer and curriculum designer. 

Her current role focuses on taking PACK to other low-resource settings by supporting ministries of health with in-country localisations and implementations of PACK. She has contributed to the curriculum design, implementation strategy and research activities that have supported this scale-up of PACK. In 2022, she led the work to update the clinical content of PACK to form the clinical decision support component of the WHO Academy’s primary care course, IMPACCT (Integrated Management of Primary Acute and Chronic Care – Training).

Ruth is a medical doctor and knowledge translation practitioner with family medicine and public health training. Her initial work at the KTU saw her building on 10 years of clinical experience, which included the integration of TB, HIV and ARV care in a primary care setting. This background formed the foundation for her public health master’s thesis and contributed towards integrating these conditions in PALSA Plus, the KTU’s clinical decision support content at that time. She was the lead author in expanding PALSA Plus to become PACK, a comprehensive clinical decision support tool aligned to South African policy for primary care. She led a team of clinical content editors to maintain and expand the PACK content  to align to international evidence and World Health Organisation guidance. The result was the creation of PACK Global and the growth of the PACK suite across the life course, supporting both primary care clinicians and lay health workers.

Ruth is motivated by the experience of supporting the implementations of PACK globally and is working to expand PACK’s reach to other low- and middle-income countries.