Kelly A. Kay, PhD is a senior health system executive with extensive experience leading integrated aging care and population health strategies across Ontario. She co-founded and currently serves as the Executive Director of Provincial Geriatrics Leadership Ontario, where she provides province-wide leadership supporting more than 390 specialized geriatric and seniors’ mental health programs and over 2,400 clinicians.
Kelly is widely recognized for advancing innovative, patient-centred models of care across hospital, primary care, and community services. She led one of Ontario’s first Academic Family Health Teams at a major academic health sciences centre, inclusive of an imbedded family medicine clinical teaching unit. Kelly has also played a key leadership role in the expansion of interprofessional community-based geriatric services, and collaborated in the identification and development of design elements of integrated care for older adults living with complex health conditions. She initiated the development of regional primary care memory clinics in central east Ontario, and has advanced regional and provincial strategies for dementia and frailty care, in collaboration with Regional Geriatric Programs across Ontario. She co-authored the provincial Competency Framework for Interprofessional Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment, and in 2023 co-developed and launched the Provincial Common Orientation to the Care of Older Adults, a workforce training program that has since trained more than 1,380 health and social professionals from more than 300 organizations across Ontario in the care of older adults with complex health conditions. She also co-led the development of the successful Caregiving Strategies program, which includes resources and an online course for family and friend care partners of older adults living with frailty.
One of Kelly’s central contributions has been the creation and ongoing leadership of the Provincial Asset Inventory, the only provincial data repository for specialized geriatric services and seniors’ mental health programs in Ontario. This work has positioned PGLO as a trusted source of system intelligence, supporting capacity planning, policy dialogue, and accountability. Kelly also led the further strengthening of this infrastructure through modernization of data collection processes, expanded analytics, and the production of population‑level insights on frailty, service supply, demand, and outcomes.
Throughout her career, Kelly has built strong partnerships with physicians and clinicians of all disciplines, health system leaders, community organizations, and academic institutions to support system transformation and improve outcomes at scale. Through PGLO, she regularly convenes 130 system partners across clinical services, primary care, Ontario Health Teams, research and policy. She supports the Provincial Older Adult and Care Partner Advisory Council and is deeply committed to advancing equity in health care, bringing experience in supporting inclusive, community-informed approaches to care.
Kelly holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and her research is focused on health service design for older adults living with frailty, dementia and other complex conditions. She also holds a Master of Arts in Leadership (Health Specialization) from Royal Roads University, is an Adjunct Professor at Ontario Tech University, and a Research and Teaching Affiliate at the Institute for Life Course & Aging (University of Toronto). Kelly contributes to multiple provincial and national advisory bodies related to aging, quality standards, and system performance.