Keynote speakers

Dr. Carolyn Bennett

The Honourable Dr. Carolyn Bennett, PC, MP, was appointed Minister of State (Public Health) on December 12, 2003. She was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1997 general election and was re-elected in 2000 and 2004 representing the electoral district of St. Paul’s.

Dr. Bennett served as Chair of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament, the sub-Committee on the Status of Persons with Disabilities (Human Resources Development Committee) and the Canada-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group. Dr. Bennett also served on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, and the Standing Committee on Health. She was also a member of the Standing Committee on Finance and was Chair of the Liberal Women's Caucus.

Prior to her election, Dr. Bennett was a family physician and a founding partner of Bedford Medical Associates in downtown Toronto. She was President of the Medical Staff Association of Women's College Hospital and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Bennett served on the Boards of Havergal College, Women's College Hospital, the Ontario Medical Association, and the Medico-Legal Society of Toronto.

Dr. Bennett obtained her degree in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1974, and received her certification in Family Medicine in 1976.

Dr. David Butler-Jones

Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada's first Chief Public Health Officer, heads the newly created Public Health Agency of Canada, providing leadership on the government's efforts to protect the health and safety of Canadians. Dr. Butler-Jones brings to the position an extensive background in public health and has most recently served as the Medical Health Officer for Sun Country Health Region and Consulting Medical Health Officer for the Saskatoon Health Region in Saskatchewan. He is also an Associate Clinical Professor with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan and has taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

From 1995 to 2002, Dr. Butler-Jones was Chief Medical Health Officer for the Province of Saskatchewan and Executive Director of the Population Health and Primary Health Services Branch for the province. He has worked in many parts of Canada and has experience with consultations and work exchanges in places as diverse as the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Scotland, Brazil, Kosovo, and Chile.

Dr. Butler-Jones has served as: President, Canadian Public Health Association; Vice President, American Public Health Association; Chair, Canadian Roundtable on Climate Change and Health 2000; International Regent, American College of Preventive Medicine; Member, Council for the Canadian Population Health Initiative; Chair, National Coalition on Enhancing Preventive Practices of Health Professionals; Co-Chair of the Canadian Coalition for Public Health in the 21st Century. He is a current member of the Institute of Population & Public Health Advisory Board.

Dr. Ilona Kickbusch

Dr. Ilona Kickbusch is Professor for Global Health at Yale University’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. Currently on a leave of absence from Yale, she is a senior advisor to the Director of the Pan American Health Organization. Before joining Yale in 1998, Dr. Kickbusch worked with the World Health Organization, where she initiated the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, the Healthy Cities project, and other global initiatives such as health promotion in schools. Recently, Dr. Kickbusch was the distinguished scholar leader of the Fulbright New Century Scholars program, “Health in a Borderless World.” Her key academic interest is in the establishment of interdisciplinary global health studies. Her research focus is health and foreign policy in a changing global context and the links between globalization, modernization and health. Dr. Kickbusch is a political scientist with a PhD from Konstanz University, Germany.

Dr. James Orbinski

Dr. James Orbinski is Research Scientist and Associate Professor at St. Michaels' Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada. He is also President of Dignitas International, a medical humanitarian organization that is developing a breakthrough model of community-based care for people living with HIV in the developing world. Dr. Orbinski is the former international president of of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), (1998 to 2001). He accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to MSF for its humanitarian work and advocacy since 1971. Dr. Orbinski is also former chair of MSF's Drugs for Neglected Diseases Working Group (2001 to 2003), which launched the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (the DNDi), a global not-for-profit research and development initiative that seeks to develop drugs for the most neglected diseases of the developing world. This initiative – the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI) launched in July 2003, is now fully operational with several drug development projects underway.

Dr. Orbinski believes that access to health care and to essential health technologies are critical global health issues today, and most especially for poor people. He practices clinical medicine at St. Michael’s’ Hospital, University of Toronto, and his research interests are focused on global health and access to health care, medicines and other health technologies; medical humanitarianism, global health research and development policy, and community based care for people living with HIV in the developing world.

Dr. David McCoy

After graduating as a medical doctor from the UK, David McCoy worked as a junior doctor for two and a half years in England before spending two and half years in a rural hospital in northern Kwazulu, during which time he became the District Medical Superintendent. He then worked as a senior policy research fellow at the Child Health Unit of the University of Cape Town for 18 months.

For the subsequent six years, he worked for the Health Systems Trust, a non-government organisation based in South Africa that was established to develop a research and evidence base to support the transformation and development of the health care system through research, technical support to government, district development, training and advocacy.

David was a founding member of the Global Equity Gauge Alliance and has been active in the international public health field. He has served as a consultant to WHO and other health agencies and has spoken publicly on a variety of topics including research and development of medicines, the roll-out of antiretroviral treatment in Africa, global health governance and maternal mortality. He helped to conceptualise, initiate and produce the Global Health Watch 2005/06, an alternative world health report under the auspices of the Peoples Health Movement.

He has a Masters in maternal and child healthy and a doctorate in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He is currently working as a public health specialist registrar in the National Health Service in London at the Health Policy Unit, University College London.

Michael Decter

Michael B. Decter is a Harvard-trained economist with over two decades of experience as a senior manager. He is a leading Canadian expert on health systems, with a wealth of international experience. In 2003, he was appointed as founding Chair of the Health Council of Canada. The mandate of the Health Council is to monitor and make annual public reports on the implementation of the Accord, particularly its accountability and transparency provisions.

As a senior manager in the public sector, Michael served as Deputy Minister of Health for Ontario. He also served as Cabinet Secretary in the Government of Manitoba.

Michael is the author of several books, including Four Strong Winds – Understanding the Growing Challenges to Health Care, published in June 2000.

As a consultant, Michael has led major assignments, including reengineering, mergers, and strategic planning for many of Canada's leading teaching hospitals and health systems.

Michael has also worked for health associations and for religious orders within the health field. Clients have included the Catholic Health Association of Canada, Les Soeurs de Charité de Montréal, the Grey Nuns of Manitoba, and the Catholic Health Association of Ontario.

Most recently, Michael was the Chair of the Board for the Canadian Institute for Health Information. He continues to serve as Chair of St. Elizabeth Healthcare, and the Ontario Cancer Quality Council. He is a Board Member of Innova Life Sciences and Evolved Digital Systems.

Roy Romanow

Roy Romanow was appointed on November 13, 2003, as a Member of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), an agency which provides Parliament and the Canadian public with an external review of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). SIRC also investigates complaints by individuals concerning CSIS and examines reports by Ministers relating to the national security of Canada.

Roy Romanow was born, raised, and educated in Saskatoon. He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan where he earned his Arts and Law Degrees. He was first elected to the Saskatchewan Legislature in 1967. Between 1971 and 1982, Roy Romanow served as Deputy Premier of Saskatchewan.

In 1979, Mr. Romanow was appointed Saskatchewan's first Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. He was one of the key players in the federal-provincial negotiations which resulted in the Constitutional Accord of November 1981. In 1984, he co-authored a book on those negotiations, Canada... Notwithstanding.

Mr. Romanow also served as a member on the Canadian Medical Association Task Force on the Allocation of Health Care Resources from 1983 to 1985.

On November 7, 1987, Mr. Romanow was acclaimed Leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party. On October 21, 1991, Mr. Romanow won a 55-seat majority government, and assumed the duties of Premier on November 1, 1991. Mr. Romanow's government introduced a number of fiscal, economic and social reforms. These included an expansion of the ground-breaking Action Plan for Children, the introduction of the Building Independence strategy to help move families off social assistance, and enhancements to the provincial health care system. Mr. Romanow retired from politics in February 2001.

In April 2001, Mr. Romanow was appointed a Senior Fellow in Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina, and is also a visiting Fellow in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University.

On November 28, 2002, Roy Romanow, head of the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, recommended sweeping changes to ensure the long-term sustainability of Canada’s health care system with the delivery of its Final Report to Canadians, “Final Report: Building on Values: The Future of Health Care in Canada”.

Dr. Richard Lessard

Dr. Richard Lessard is a physician specializing in community health. Since 1992, he has held the position of Director of Public Health with the Montréal Regional Health and Social Services Board. He is a member of the Collège des médecins du Québec and of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. From 1980 to 1982, he was a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences of Université de Sherbrooke’s Faculty of Medicine, and from 1982 to 1992, he headed the Community Health Department of the Cité de la Santé de Laval. He was also Assistant Clinical Professor with Université de Montréal’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and McGill University’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

He has presided over the International Francophone Heart Health Network since 1991 and has been the principal investigator for the Federal-Provincial Heart Health Initiative since 1992. In 1990-91, he worked for the District Health Authority in Cambridge, England, where he studied public health practices in the British national health system. In 1996, he was a consultant for the World Bank and worked on the organization of frontline health care in Mauritius. Dr. Lessard was a member of Canada’s National Forum on Health from 1994 to 1997 and worked as a public health consultant for the Department of Health and Sustainable Development of the World Health Organization in Geneva. Dr. Richard Lessard is currently the Chair of the Canadian Population Health Initiative (CPHI) Council (CPHI is part of the Canadian Institute for Health Information).

Dr. Penny Hawe

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 of New South Wales in 1977. Her major was in community psychology. Dr. Hawe received her Masters 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 recently established CIHR International Collaborative Centre for the Study of Social and Physical Environments and Health. The Centre links 17 investigators in Canada, Australia, USA and UK on an interdisciplinaryprogram of work on the theory, methods and ethics of complex interventions. Dr. Hawe is a member of CIHR’s Institute of Population and Public Health’s Advisory Board.

Professor Margaret Whitehead

Margaret Whitehead read biological sciences at the University of York, England, and studied for her PhD in social epidemiology and health policy in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK. Currently, she is the W.H.Duncan Professor of Public Health at the University of Liverpool, where she is also the Head of the Division of Public Health.

For the past twenty years, her key research interest has been social inequalities in health and in health care, in particular what can be done to reduce them? The current research programme that Margaret Whitehead leads focuses on the social dimensions of ill-health. In particular it traces social pathways to and from health inequalities and what this means for developing more effective health and social policy. The programme explores not only the social causes of ill health, but also the adverse consequences of having a chronic illness, such as reduced income and employment chances, social isolation and stigma in relation to specific tracer conditions. With international collaborators, her studies are looking at the ways in which health and social welfare systems themselves reduce or exacerbate the adverse consequences of ill-health and what can be done to improve the situation.

She is keen to find ways for research evidence to get to where it can be most useful in informing policy-making and public health practice. Indeed, she sees this as an essential responsibility for a researcher. She has therefore been involved in various national and international efforts to address social inequalities in health, including sitting on the UK Government’s Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (the Acheson Inquiry), membership of various World Health Organisation taskforces on equity, and being a founder member of the Global Health Equity Initiative, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and SIDA. She is currently a member of two European Union networks to learn from international experiences on inequalities: one on finding ways to evaluate the impact on inequalities of complex interventions, and one tracing 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 (Penguin Books, 1992), which has become a Penguin non-fiction best-seller; Tackling inequalities in health: an agenda for action (King’s Fund, London 1995); Challenging inequities in health: from ethics to action (Oxford University Press, New York, 2001). Her policy briefing documents for WHO with Göran Dahlgren – Concepts and principles of equity and health and Policies and strategies to promote social equity in health - have been translated into 20 languages and won a number of awards.