Keynote speakers
Sir Michael Marmot
Michael Marmot has been at the forefront of research into health inequalities for the past 20 years, as Principal Investigator of the Whitehall studies of British civil servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality. He chairs the Department of Health Scientific Reference Group on tackling health inequalities and chairs the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) Research and Development Committee. He also chairs committees of the BHF and the Wellcome Trust. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years. Internationally acclaimed, Marmot is a Vice President of the Academia Europaea; a member of the RAND Health Advisory Board; a Foreign Associate Member of the Institute of Medicine, and chairs the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. He was awarded the Balzan Prize 2004 for Epidemiology and will give the Harveian Oration in 2006. He was Knighted by Her Majesty The Queen in 2000 for services to epidemiology and understanding health inequalities.
Dr. Monique Bégin
A sociologist, the Honourable Dr. Bégin was the first woman from Québec elected to the House of Commons. Re-elected three times, she was twice appointed Minister of National Health and Welfare. She remains best known for the Canada Health Act (1984). An academic since she left politics, Dr. Bégin taught in Women's Studies at Ottawa and Carleton Universities.
Dr. Bégin co-chaired the Royal Commission on Learning of Ontario and served on the International Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she received several honorary doctorates in recognition of her contribution to human rights and to public policies. In 1998, she was invested as Officer of the Order of Canada. She is the Commissioner with the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health and a current member of the Canadian Population Health Initiative Council.
Dr. John Frank
Dr. John Frank trained in medicine and community medicine at the University of Toronto, in family medicine at McMaster University, and in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was the founding Director of Research at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto from 1991 until 1997, and is currently a Senior Scientist. That Institute's research program aims to identify and act upon major preventable causes of work-related disability- such as low back pain.
Dr. Frank is a Fellow with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Population Health Program, and Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Public Health Sciences. As a physician-epidemiologist, with special expertise in prevention, his main area of interest is the biopsychosocial determinants of health status at the population level. Dr. Frank was Provostial Advisor on Population Health at the University of Toronto from 1994 to 1997. From 1997 to 2001, he was Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received the Distinguished Teacher and Mentor of the Year Award. In December 2000, he was appointed Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Population and Public Health, located at the University of Toronto.
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. Perry Kendall
Dr. Perry Kendall has devoted his professional life to promoting and pursuing innovative health care practices in British Columbia. His efforts have focused on the prevention of disease, injury and disability, and the promotion of population health.
Dr. Kendall is a former Medical Health Officer for the City of Toronto and a former CEO ofthe Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario. He is considered to be one of Canada's leadingauthorities on public health and drug addiction. He was co-chair of the task group on thefeasibility of Supervised Injection Site Research. He was also instrumental in developingneedle exchange programs and Canada's first safe injection site in Vancouver in 2003.
Dr. Kendall has courageously advanced health practices in B.C., including the creation of an Act that gives pharmacists the right to prescribe emergency contraceptive pills for women; initiating and promoting the health and well-being of B.C.'s Aboriginal people; and initiating legislation that makes HIV/AIDS a reportable disease.
Through his efforts, public health is achieving a higher profile in this province. As a provincial health officer, Dr. Kendall's leadership enabled the province to rapidly mobilize its resources against a potential outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza. He is currently working with the Ministry of Health to develop core public health programs, and to modernize the Provincial Health Act.
Dr. Perry Kendall is presently the co-chair of the newly established Pan-Canadian Public Health Network.
Dr. Charles Godue
Native to the city of Granby, Québec, Dr. Charles Godue obtained his medical degree from the University of Sherbrooke in 1976. In 1978, Dr. Godue left Canada to work as a volunteer physician with a multidisciplinary team with a Mayan rural population in Guatemala, where he provided delivery of primary health care service, trained community health workers and mobilized communities for the defense of their social and economic rights.
Upon his return to Canada in 1981, Dr. Godue pursued his commitment to public health, completing a specialization in community medicine at the Montreal General Hospital and obtaining a Master’s Degree in Sciences from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of McGill in Montreal. In 1989, he took a position as the Assistant Director of the Department of Community Health of East Montreal.
He maintained an active involvement in international health issues, particularly with issues of the Americas, and in 1991, Dr. Godue joined the Pan American Health Organization. Since that date, Dr. Godue has assumed the roles of Coordinator of the Training Program in International Health, Regional Advisor for Public Health and Medical Education, and, as of February 2003, Chief of the Unit of Human Resources Development.
Dr. Stephen Corber
Dr. Stephen Corber has recently joined the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University to help launch its new Masters program in global health. Dr. Corber has been practicing public health for 30 years. For the past 10 years, he has been head of the Disease Prevention and Control programs of the Pan American Health Organization. The mandate was to help countries of Latin America and the Caribbean improve their capacity to measure, eliminate, prevent and control infectious and chronic disease. Prior to this position, he was the Medical Officer of Health for the Ottawa-Carleton Health Department, supervising the application of a wide range of public health programs. During that time, he was also Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa, and the Scientific Editor of the Journal of the Canadian Public Health Association for four years. He has been involved in a number of Canadian advisory boards, including the National Advisory Committee on Immunizing Agents, the Medical Council of Canada’s Preventive Medicine Test Committee and the Ontario Ministry of Health Advisory Committee on Communicable Diseases.
Dr. Janet Smylie
Dr. Janet Smylie is the Director of the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre, a joint project of the First Nations University of Canada, the University of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan. Prior to coming to Saskatchewan, she practiced and taught family medicine as a full-time academic family physician in Ottawa, Ontario. Dr. Smylie has completed a Master of Public Health degree and holds a senior research fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She is the principal investigator of two CIHR-funded studies. She has worked clinically in a variety of Aboriginal communities, both urban and rural. Her research interests include: health indicators of relevance to Indigenous communities; knowledge translation and Indigenous knowledge; perinatal surveillance and Aboriginal peoples; and Indigenous research methods. She is a member of the Metis Nation of Ontario, with Metis roots in Saskatchewan.
Dr. Clyde Hertzman
Clyde Hertzman completed training in medicine, community medicine, and epidemiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and has been on the faculty of the University of British Columbia since 1985. Nationally, he is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and holds a Canada Research Chair in Population Health and Human Development. Internationally, he has played a central role in developing a conceptual framework for the "determinants of health", that places early childhood development at the centre. He is currently directing 'HELP', the Human Early Learning Partnership of British Columbia. HELP is an interdisciplinary network of researchers from BC's universities who are studying early child development 'from cell to society'. Clyde also holds an honorary appointment at the Institute for Child Health in London, Ontario.
Dr. David Hay
David I. Hay, PhD, was appointed Director of the Family Network of Canadian Policy Research Networks in July 2004. Previously, he was Manager of Reports and Analysis for the Canadian Population Health Initiative at the Canadian Institute for Health Information, where he was responsible for coordinating knowledge exchange and public engagement strategies for CPHI. David led the research, writing and production of CPHI's national population health report, Improving the Health of Canadians 2004.
David has many years of experience researching and writing in the areas of population health, well-being, and social development in the private, public and non-profit sectors. Particular areas of expertise include child and family policy, poverty and inequality, governance and accountability, and evaluation.
David has had affiliations with a number of social policy organizations and projects in a voluntary capacity, including: as a director of the Canadian Council on Social Development; a founding member of Campaign 2000 to End Child Poverty in Canada; and as president of the Greater Victoria Child and Youth Advocacy Society.
Dr. James Dunn
Jim Dunn is a Research Scientist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH), an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto and is Director of the Neighbourhoods and Health Research Interest Group at the Centre for Urban Health Initiatives at the University of Toronto. He also holds appointments as an Associate Member of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto and is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary.
Dr. Dunn’s background is in the social geography of health, having earned a PhD from Simon Fraser University in 1999. He was awarded the Jacques May Prize for the top dissertation in medical geography by the Association of American Geographers, also in 1999. After appointments at the University of British Columbia and the University of Calgary, his tenure in Toronto began in January 2004.
He is the recipient of a number of awards, including Scholar awards from the British Columbia Health Research Foundation and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award in Community Health Sciences, and the McLeod Award for Teaching from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary. He serves on the Institute Advisory Board for the Institute of Population and Public Health of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and 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.
Dr. Lawrence Frank
Dr. Lawrence Frank is the J. Armand Bombardier Chairholder in Sustainable Urban Transportation in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in the interaction between land use, travel behaviour, air quality and public health.
Dr. Frank has conducted and published numerous studies for governmental agencies and private enterprise on the transportation, environmental and health impacts of development decisions and transportation investments. He is currently overseeing two major programs, the SMARTRAQ program in Atlanta and the LUTAQH program in Seattle, that link urban planning, the environment and public health. The SMARTRAQ program tests the relationships between obesity, physical activity, travel choice, urban form and air quality. The LUTAQH program assesses urban form linkages with air quality, climate change (with Center for Clean Air Policy) and public health.
Additionally, Dr. Frank is co-investigator of the National Institutes of Health Neighborhood Quality of Life Study (NQLS) with Dr. James Sallis and Dr. Brian Saelens to test the effects of the built environment on physical activity in 32 communities in Seattle and Baltimore. He recently co-authored two books, Public Health and Community Design, The Impacts of The Built Environment on Physical Activity and Urban Sprawl and Public Health.
Dr. Cordell Neudorf
Dr. Neudorf attended the University of Saskatchewan where he received his Bachelor of Science in Anatomy, cum laude and his Doctor of Medicine Degrees. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a Master of Health Science, Community Health and Epidemiology Specialization and a fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada with Specialty Certification in Community Medicine.
During his academic years, Dr. Neudorf received several awards, fellowships and prizes including the C.P. Shah Award for excellence in research during the Community Medicine Residency Program and the W. Harding Le Riche Prize in Epidemiology for attaining the highest standing in Epidemiology course work in the MHSc Program.
He has contributed papers in journals, published conference proceedings and abstracts as well as providing technical reports relevant to his academic field. He is an invited lecturer outside of the University of Saskatchewan and has been invited to present at various conferences throughout North America. His research interests include population health and health disparities, as well as health status reporting.
Dr. Neudorf is involved with many health-related boards, committees, working groups and associations on a Federal, Provincial, Municipal and Health Region level.
Currently Dr. Neudorf is Chief Medical Health Officer/Vice President Research for the Saskatoon Health Region.
Dr. Jeanette Ward
Jeanette’s interest in contributing to the Board of the Canadian Public Health Association stems from her longstanding commitment to public health research, policy and advocacy.
Jeanette arrived in Canada in 2005 to assume the position of Director / Directrice, Institute of Population Health / Institut de recherche sur la santé des populations at the University of Ottawa. This trans-faculty initiative brings together researchers from diverse disciplines and offers bilingual doctoral training in population health.
Her previous appointments in Australia included a six-year term as the Inaugural Director of the Needs Assessment & Health Outcomes Unit (NAHOU) in Central Sydney Area Health Service (1994-2001). In this position, she led a highly productive operations-oriented research group. NAHOU published needs assessments to guide service planning; conducted interventional research in primary care and pioneered novel ways to engage consumers in health topics. In 2001, Jeanette was appointed Director of the Division of Population Health for South Western Sydney. There, she was responsible for modernising a population health service employing over 200 staff, implementing evidence-based decision-making and, in partnership with Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation, elevating Aboriginal health as a priority for regional service development. She also created the Centre for Research, Evidence Management & Surveillance (REMS) which, having produced the first comprehensive health equity profile for South Western Sydney, instigated research in issues including food insecurity, smoking in Arabic communities and health promoting schools.
Jeanette has held high-level Board and Committee appointments, including her appointment by the NSW Minister of Health to the Board of the NSW Cancer Council (2001-2005); her appointment by the Commonwealth Minister of Health to the National Breast Cancer Centre (2004-2005) and her election to the Council of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine (2002-2004). She also contributed as public health expert for the 2000-2003 triennium on the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Committee. She also served on the NHMRC Research Fellowships Committee that made awards across Australia in all health and medical research disciplines (basic, clinical, population health). Jeanette received the Public Health Association (NSW) Public Health Impact award in 2000. In 2003, she was appointed Public Health Co-Chair of the Tobacco Policy Statement Working Group for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Royal Australasian College of Psychiatrists.
She has contributed to the National Institute of Clinical Studies (NICS) Working Group on Evidence into Practice in Community Settings (2003) and the National Public Health Partnership (NPHP) Public Health Workforce Project Steering Committee.
Jeanette has published over 160 full-length original research articles covering many topics and methods including cervical screening, tobacco control, knowledge transfer and risk communication. Jeanette has a particular interest in building capacity and systems for evidence-based policy and practice in population health. She is currently working with the Public Health Agency of Canada to strengthen the scientific basis of primary prevention and use of evidence in policy formulation. Jeanette considers that, as an organisation with a distinct pan-Canadian mandate, CPHA has a seminal role to play in the renaissance of public health in Canada.
André Picard
André Picard is the public health reporter at The Globe and Mail, and the author of three best-selling books, including CRITICAL CARE: Canadian Nurses Speak For Change.
Mr. Picard has received much acclaim for his writing, including the Michener Award for Meritorious Public Service Journalism and the Canadian Policy Research Award. In 2002, he received the Centennial Prize of the Pan-American Health Organization as the top public health reporter in the Americas, and, in 2005, he was named Canada's first Public Health Hero by the Canadian Public Health Association.