IAB Members (September 2009 - August 2010) - Biographies
Dr. Kristan Aronson, MSc, PhD (Chair)
Professor
Department of Community Health and Epidemiology
School of Environmental Studies
Queen's University
Dr. Aronson is the Chair of IPPH's Institute Advisory Board and is a Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, and in the School of Environmental Studies, at Queen's University. With a BSc in Physical Geography and MSc in Epidemiology and Biostatistics (McGill University), training in Community Medicine (University of Edinburgh), a PhD in Epidemiology (University of Toronto), and post-doctoral training at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Lyon, France), Dr. Aronson's research at the Queen's Cancer Research Institute focuses on the environmental etiology of cancer. Her research impacts expert reviews, environmental legislation, worker's compensation regulations and cancer prevention guidelines. All research projects are trans-disciplinary and collaborative, involving investigators and students from Canada, the USA, Europe, and Australia. Several awards include an Investigator Award from CIHR, a Career Scientist Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, a Premier's Research Excellence Award, and Kristan was the recipient of the Golden Jubilee Medallion of Queen Elizabeth II for volunteer service. She has been involved for several years in strategic population health issues through local, provincial and national advisory boards.
Dr. Richard Massé, MD, FRCPSC, MSc (Vice-chair)
Director
School of Public Health
University of Montreal
Dr. Richard Massé is currently the Director of the new School of Public Health at the University of Montreal since last August. He has a Doctorate in Medicine from Sherbrooke University and a Master Degree in Epidemiology from McGill University. He is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Community Medicine.
Dr. Massé has dedicated most of his career to Public Health. Dr. Massé has held different positions in the past, including serving as Assistant Deputy Minister responsible for Public Health at the Ministry of Health and Social Services and Chief Medical Officer for the Province of Quebec (1998-2003). He has been also the President and CEO of the Quebec National Institute of Public Health (2003-2008).
Before that, Dr. Massé has occupied the position of Medical Officer of Health at the Community Health Department of the Montreal General Hospital (1989-1993) and Coordinator of the Infectious Diseases Unit at the Public Health Direction in Montreal (1993-1997). He also worked as a primary health care physician at the CLSC Lac Etchemin and has some international experience serving in Africa previously.
Dr. James Blanchard, MD, MPH, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Community Health Sciences
University of Manitoba
James F. Blanchard is an epidemiologist and public health specialist who obtained his medical degree from the University of Manitoba in 1986. He subsequently received a Master of Public Health (1990) and Ph.D. in Epidemiology (1997), both from the Johns Hopkins University. He is currently an Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba (Canada), and Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Public Health (awarded in 2004).
Since 2001, Dr. Blanchard has been living and working in Bangalore, India to support the implementation of HIV/AIDS programs on behalf of the University of Manitoba. Between 2001 and 2006 he was the Resident Coordinator of the India-Canada Collaborative HIV/AIDS Project (ICHAP), which is a 5-year project based in the states of Karnataka and Rajasthan designed to build capacities to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Since December 2003, he has been the Project Director for the "Sankalp" Project, which is a 5-year focused HIV/AIDS prevention project in Karnataka funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under "Avahan", its India AIDS Initiative. In addition to his project-related work, Dr. Blanchard has provided technical assistance and strategic advice to a number of government and non-government associations, including the governments of Canada, India and Pakistan, the Canadian International Development Agency and the World Bank. Prior to his work in India, Dr. Blanchard was Manitoba's Provincial Epidemiologist and Head of the Manitoba Collaborative Epidemiology Unit (1992-2000). In that role he developed an applied program of surveillance and research of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. He helped establish internationally recognized research programs in inflammatory bowel disease and diabetes, and continues to conduct research in these areas.
Dr. Marni Brownell, PhD
Associate Professor
University of Manitoba
Marni Brownell received her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Manitoba in 1991. Since that time she has had an appointment with the Department of Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba, first as an Assistant Professor, and since 2007 as an Associate Professor. She conducts her research through the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, where she is a Senior Research Scientist. Her research focuses on population-based studies of child health and development, with particular focus on the social determinants of child health. She has expertise in the use of linked administrative databases. Dr. Brownell has received research funding from numerous provincial and national sources. In the past 10 years she has published 24 articles in peer-reviewed journals, another 23 publications in other sources (e.g., reports, book chapters, abstracts), and made over 70 presentations at conferences and meetings. She has sat on several different review committees for CIHR and other granting agencies.
Dr. David Butler-Jones, MD, MHSc, CCFP, FRCPC, FACPM
Chief Public Health Officer
Public Health Agency of Canada
Dr. David Butler-Jones is Canada's first Chief Public Health Officer. He heads the Public Health Agency of Canada which provides leadership on the government's efforts to protect and promote the health and safety of Canadians.
He has worked in many parts of Canada in both Public Health and Clinical Medicine, and has consulted in a number of other countries.
Dr. Butler-Jones has taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and has been involved as a researcher in a broad range of public health issues. He is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba as well as a Clinical Professor with the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Medicine.
From 1995 to 2002, Dr. Butler-Jones was Chief Medical Health Officer and Executive Director of the Population Health and Primary Health Services Branches for the Province of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Butler-Jones has served with a number of organizations including as: President of the Canadian Public Health Association; Vice President of the American Public Health Association; Chair of the Canadian Roundtable on Health and Climate Change; International Regent on the board of the American College of Preventive Medicine; Member of the Governing Council for the Canadian Population Health Initiative; Chair of the National Coalition on Enhancing Preventive Practices of Health Professionals; and Co-Chair of the Canadian Coalition for Public Health in the 21st Century.
In recognition of his service in the field of public health, York University's Faculty of Health bestowed on Dr. Butler-Jones an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
Dr. Roy Cameron, PhD
Executive Director
Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation
Professor
Applied Health Sciences
University of Waterloo
Roy Cameron is the Executive Director of the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation (CBRPE) and a Professor in Applied Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo. He trained at the University of Waterloo (MA in English, PhD in Clinical Psychology) and Duke University Medical Center (Clinical Internship).
Dr. Cameron's aspiration is to contribute to improved health of Canadians. To that end, in his CBRPE role, his focus is on developing capacity that enables leaders in research, evaluation, policy, and practice to work together to plan, study, and continually improve policies and programs that promote health. His own research in has been mainly in tobacco control.
Dr. Cameron played a lead role in initiating the Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative, and the Population Health Intervention Research Initiative for Canada. He also built research capacity through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Pan Canadian Training Program in Tobacco Research. Previously focused solely on linking the tobacco research community to tobacco control policy leaders, this program has expanded training to other areas in population health through a recent CIHR funding renewal.
Dr. Cameron has received honours for his career contributions from a number of organizations, including the National Cancer Institute of Canada (Diamond Jubilee Award) and the University of Waterloo (University Professor designation).
Dr. Norman Daniels, PhD
Professor of Population Ethics
Professor of Ethics and Population Health
Harvard School of Public Health
Dr. Norman Daniels is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard School of Public Health. Formerly Goldthwaite Professor, Chair of the Tufts Philosophy Department, and Professor of Medical Ethics at Tufts Medical School, where he taught from 1969 until 2002, he has degrees from Wesleyan (B.A. Summa, 1964), Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., First Honors, 1966), and Harvard (Ph.D., Plympton Dissertation Prize, 1971). He has written widely in the philosophy of science, ethics, political and social philosophy and medical ethics. He has published over 150 articles in anthologies and journals and he has published over 10 books.
His current research focuses on adapting the "benchmarks of fairness" for use in less developed countries and developing fair process for priority and limit setting decisions about resource allocation in various settings, including the new Mexican health insurance plan.
A member of the Institute of Medicine, a Fellow of the Hastings Center, a Founding Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and of the International Society for Equity in Health, he has consulted with organizations, commissions, and governments in the U.S. and abroad on issues of justice and health policy, including for the United Nations, WHO, and the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine. He served as a member of the Ethics Working Group of the Clinton White House Health Care Task Force, as a member of the Public Health Service Expert Panel on Cost Effectiveness and Clinical Preventive Medicine, as a member of a National Academy of Social Insurance study panel on the social role of Medicare, and as a member of a Century Fund task force on Medicare reform.
He served four years as a founding member of the National Cancer Policy Board, established by the Institute of Medicine and the Commission on the Life Sciences, and on the Advisory Board of the Open Society Foundation project on Medicine as a Profession, and on the International Bioethics Advisory Board of PAHO. He served recently on an IOM Committee on the use of Cost Effectiveness Analysis in regulatory contexts. He has held Fellowships and Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Retirement Research Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and others. He held a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator's Award for the period 1998-2001, as well as a Rockefeller Foundation grant for the international adaptation of the benchmarks.
Dr. Jim Dunn, MSc, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Health, Aging and Society
McMaster University
Research Scientist
Centre for Research on Inner City Health
St. Michael's Hospital
Dr. Jim Dunn holds a Chair in Applied Public Health from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada on 'Interventions in Residential Neighbourhoods and Population Health'. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University and a Research Scientist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto. He is also Fellow of the Successful Societies program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He has been a scientific advisor to a number of policy-related bodies, including the Privy Council Office of Canada, Health Canada, the National Housing Research Committee of Canada and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. His research program focuses on questions regarding the social determinants of health and the influence of economic and social policies and programs on inequalities in health and child development, with a focus on urban housing and neighbourhoods.
He currently co-leads an international study of the relationship between income distribution and population health in North American metropolitan areas. It focuses on explaining what urban structural, governance and policy factors could explain why unequal U.S. cities have poorer health than more egalitarian ones, while in Canada, no such relationship exists. In addition, he has several projects related to the role of housing and neighbourhood in the production of social inequalities in health. Among these is a project investigating the impact of the redevelopment of the Regent Park neighbourhood in Toronto, one of Canada's oldest and largest public housing developments, on adult mental health and children's developmental health and competencies.
Dr. Timothy Evans, MD, D.Phil
Assistant Director General
Information, Evidence and Research
World Health Organization
Dr Tim Evans, of Canada, is currently the Assistant Director-General for Information, Evidence and Research at the World Health Organization. From 2003 to 2007, Dr Evans served as the Assistant Director-General for Evidence and Information for Policy. He has a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Ottawa and a D.Phil in Agricultural Economics from the University of Oxford, as well as a Doctor of Medicine from McMaster University in Canada.
Dr Evans trained in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard University. He was an assistant professor of international health economics at the Harvard School of Public Health. From 1997-2003, Dr Evans was Director of Health Equity at the Rockefeller Foundation.
Dr. Slim Haddad, MD, PhD
Professor
Department of Social and Preventive Medicine
University of Montréal
Slim Haddad is a physician specializing in public health (Université d'Aix-Marseille, France); he holds a PhD in health economics from Université Claude Bernard, in Lyon, France. Dr. Haddad is a Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Montréal. He supervises the Population, Health and Development axis at the University of Montréal's Interdisciplinary Health Research Group (GRIS) and directs the Quebec Population Health Research Network's research axis in world health. Dr. Haddad is a researcher at the CHUM Research Centre in Montreal.
Dr. Haddad is active in world health research. He has participated in a movement that has led CIHR, Health Canada and other federal and provincial institutions to progressively recognize and promote Canada's role in world health research. His principal expertise lies in three spheres: studying the interface between economic and health policies; capabilities (poverty, access to public services; socioeconomic vulnerability); and health. He has coordinated the successful completion of a number of research projects in sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia. Dr. Haddad teaches planning and evaluation for public health programs, health economics, and theories of social justice as they apply to health.
Dr. Penny Hawe, MPH, PhD
Professor
Department of Community Health Sciences
University of Calgary
Dr. Penny Hawe is Professor and Markin Chair of Health and Society in the Department of Community Health Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary. She assumed the position in July 2000.
Prior to that, Dr. Hawe worked in the Department of Public Health at the University of Sydney, in Australia. She completed a Bachelor of Science (Honours) at the University New South Wales in 1977. Her major was in community psychology. Dr. Hawe received her Master of Public Health from the University of Sydney in 1990 and her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Melbourne in 1997. Dr. Hawe's main research interests are in population-level preventive interventions and social environments and health. She is the Director of a CIHR centre for research development in population health, the Population Health Intervention Research Centre at the University of Calgary. The Centre links 17 investigators in Canada, Australia, USA and UK on an interdisciplinary program of work on the theory, methods, ethics and economics of complex interventions. In her role as an IPPH IAB member Dr. Hawe is co-chair of PHIRIC, the Population Health Intervention Research Initiative for Canada. This is a pan-Canadian collaboration to increase the quantity, quality and use of population health intervention research to improve the health of Canadians. She is also member of the International Union for Health Education and Health Promotion's Global Working Group on the social determinants of health.
Susan Kirkland, PhD
Professor
Department of Community Health and Epidemiology and
Faculty of Medicine
Dalhousie University
Dr. Susan Kirkland is a in the Departments of Community Health and Epidemiology and Medicine at Dalhousie University. Dr. Kirkland completed both her Bachelor of Science degree in Kinesiology and Health Studies and her Masters degree in Health Behaviour at the University of Waterloo. She obtained her Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Toronto with a concentration in Epidemiology.
Her research lies in the areas of chronic diseases and aging. She is particularly interested in the epidemiologic investigation of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis, and the interplay between gender and the genetic, social, cultural and economic determinants of health. Dr. Kirkland has been instrumental in the development of a number of large scale initiatives, including the Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women's Health and the Atlantic Interdisciplinary Research Network for Social and Behavioural Issues in Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. She has been involved in the design and analysis of a number of longitudinal studies, including the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study, the Canadian Heart Health Surveys and the Canadian Study of Health and Aging. She is currently one of three principal investigators leading the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, funded by CIHR and CFI. This 20-year study of 50,000 Canadian men and women over the age of 45 examines the interplay between social and physical environments, genetics, lifestyle and behavioral factors, and the health care system on the process of aging and their influence on disease, health, and well-being.
Ms. Debra Lynkowski, LLB
Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Public Health Association
Debra Lynkowski has been the Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) since 2007. Formed in 1910, CPHA is an independent, not-for-profit voluntary association and the national voice for public health in Canada, with membership that includes the public, 25 health disciplines and other constituencies.
Debra received her law degree from the University of Alberta in 1986. Following this, she began a career in the non-profit sector and for over 20 years has worked at all levels within the system: local, provincial/territorial and national. With an initial focus on fund development and volunteer development, Debra worked for both the Youth Emergency Shelter Society and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada in Edmonton, Alberta, managing diverse portfolios.
From 1993 to 1999, Debra served as Executive Director of the Canadian Diabetes Association (Alberta/NWT Division). During this time, she led the organization through a period of major organizational restructuring and reorganization. Managing a budget of over $6 Million and 40 staff province-wide, Debra was responsible for all aspects of the organization including membership development, board and volunteer development, strategic planning, and the start-up of a new business venture. She later took on a national role with the association in Ottawa as the Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, and established a national public policy and advocacy office for the organization. Highlights during this period included developing first-ever position statements for the association on key issues facing people living with diabetes, and creating the first Diabetes Report Card, a comparative assessment of diabetes prevention and care in Canada.
From 2002 to 2004, Debra participated in the Executive Interchange Program at Health Canada as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control. She then served as the Director of the Canadian Stroke Strategy, creating and leading the first national strategy for stroke prevention and care. With a focus on health systems reform, the strategy moved from inception to implementation in less than three years and helped to expedite and support the development of numerous provincial and regional strategies across Canada.
Over the years, Debra has built on her university education with continued professional development, including intensive programs at the Banff Centre for Management on Organizational Change, Executive Leadership, and Government Relations.
Debra was the first layperson to be awarded the Canadian Diabetes Association Sir Frederick Banting Award in 2002 in recognition of her contribution to advocacy efforts on behalf of people affected by diabetes.
Jeannie Shoveller, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Health Care and Epidemiology
Faculty of Medicine
University of British Columbia
Professor Shoveller holds the CIHR/PHAC Applied Public Health Chair in Improving Youth Sexual Health in the School of Population & Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She also holds a Senior Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree and her Master of Arts degree, both with a specialty in health education, from Dalhousie University. Prof. Shoveller obtained a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at University of British Columbia in 1997, and completed postdoctoral training at the BC Research Institute for Children's and Women's Health. She assumed her current faculty position in 1999.
Professor Shoveller's research program addresses the theme of reducing health and social inequalities among youth. She is well-known for her contributions to the use of qualitative methods as well as survey methodologies. She has written extensively about social context and structure as determinants of health, with a particular emphasis on investigating the impacts of gender, culture and place as key determinants of young people's sexual health. She continues to serve on several peer review committees for the CIHR and other Canadian and international health research funding agencies. In addition, she reviews for many international and Canadian peer-reviewed journals. Prof. Shoveller also is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Cancer Prevention Research for the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute (formerly known as the National Cancer Institute of Canada). Prof. Shoveller is a member of several international collaborative networks, including an appointment as a Collaborating Professor at the Institute of Social Medicine, State University of Rio de Janeiro and the Institute for Studies in Public Health, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Dr. Margaret Whitehead, PhD
W.H. Duncan Chair of Public Health
Faculty of Medicine
University of Liverpool
Professor Margaret Whitehead holds the W.H. Duncan Chair of Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. She is also the Head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Policy Research on the Social Determinants of Health.
Professor Whitehead earned her Bachelor of Biology in 1970 at York University and her Doctor of Philosophy degree at the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm in 1997. She was elected Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom in 2001.
For the past 20 years, Dr. Whitehead's key research interests have involved social inequalities in health and in health care - and what can be done to reduce them. To this end, she has been part of various national and international efforts, which include sitting on the UK Government's Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (the Acheson Inquiry), and being a founding member of the Global Health Equity Initiative funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and SIDA. Currently, she is a member of two European Union networks related to international experiences on inequalities; one evaluates the impact on inequalities of complex interventions, while the other one traces the health inequalities impact of public policies and political context.
Her books related to the above include: The Health Divide, published together with the seminal Black Report, which has become a Penguin non-fiction best-seller; Tackling inequalities in health: an agenda for action; and Challenging inequities in health: from ethics to action. The policy briefing documents she co-wrote for the WHO have been translated into over 20 languages.
Ms. Armine Yalnizyan, MIR
Senior Economist
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Armine Yalnizyan has written about labour markets and public finance for over 20 years since receiving her Masters of Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto. After 10 years as program director with the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, she authored a ground-breaking report in 1998 on income inequality in Canada, entitled The Growing Gap. She reprised the topic of income inequality after the national economy had experienced 10 years of strong economic growth, releasing the report The Rich and the Rest of Us in 2007. Armine joined the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as senior economist in 2008. Over the years she has served on advisory groups to Ministers at the federal and provincial levels with respect to labour and income support policies. She is the honoured first recipient of the Atkinson Foundation Award for Economic Justice, and received the Morley Gunderson Prize from the University of Toronto in 2003. Armine is a founding member and steering committee member of the Progressive Economics Forum and the Alternative Federal Budget. She also serves on the boards of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Canadian Association of Business Economists.