From her Kelowna, BC home, Melissa Blair likes nothing better than spending time chatting one-to-one with MPH students and working with them on course material.

Melissa graduated from Brock in 2010 with a BA in Community Health Sciences, minoring in Business. She went on to complete her master’s degree in health and social marketing at Middlesex University in London, England.

Melissa is a global creative leader with 14 years of social change marketing and communications experience spanning four major cities across three continents. She is seasoned in the social impact agency, non-profit, tech, and startup industries with proven success in building relationships, designing award-winning strategies, and leading teams to success.

In her current role as a Communications Consultant at Urban Matters, Melissa works alongside government, non-profit organizations, businesses, and Indigenous communities to conduct public engagement, build partnerships, and co-create enduring solutions for long-term social impact. She is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Purppl (Purposeful People), coaching social entrepreneurs who need predictable, sustainable business models to help solve tough community, social, and environmental challenges.

Her professional accomplishments include graduating from Impact Denver, Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation program, being shortlisted in the Marketer & Entrepreneur Categories for the B&T Marketing Magazine 30 Under 30 Award and receiving the 2016 Victorian PRIA Award of Excellence for Best Health Campaign of the Year for the “Fit Fab & 50” campaign. She has also won the 2015 Canadian Public Relations Society Gold in Social Marketing and Silver in Advocacy for the “Dare2Give” campaign. Melissa has been a keynote or breakout speaker at various conferences and founded and implemented a social marketing workshop training series for industry professionals titled “Beyond Awareness: Social Marketing Campaigns that Change Attitudes and Behaviour.”

She highlights “human insight and truth” as a key principle for marketing and communications within public health organizations. “To be relevant and to resonate, campaigns must be based on human truth,” she explains. “It’s important then to develop a deep understanding of audiences and to involve those audiences as much as possible in the campaign planning process.”

Melissa recognizes the “a-ha moment” when her MPH students make that all-important leap in understanding the essence of social marketing and health communications.

“Social marketing is very different than social media,” she adds. “As professionals, we can apply effective and forward-thinking business strategies to address the world’s public health concerns. That gives us a unique opportunity to create change.”

As a health geographer, Dr. Antony Chum works closely with community groups and governmental organizations to promote health equity goals. His research centres on understanding socio-environmental determinants of health and developing strategies to build healthier cities and communities, especially for marginalized and underserved communities such as the homeless, low-income, and LGBT people. His recent work includes collaborating with the United Nations and World Health Organization to produce the Joint Global Report on Urban Health.

Antony is also an Associate Scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ont., a major teaching and research hospital with expertise in diverse areas of health care. This position gives Antony a base to launch a multidisciplinary lab and collaboration network.

“I am currently working with groups such as Rainbow Health Ontario, Egale Canada, and The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences to investigate how to use OHIP and hospitalization data to understand the risk of suicide and quality of care for those at risk of suicide in the LGBT community,” he explains. “The findings of this research can be used in clinical and community settings to help reduce LGBT suicides.”

Antony also works with an interdisciplinary team of researchers in Toronto as part of At Home/Chez Soi, a five-city national housing and health care project funded and coordinated by the Mental Health Commission of Canada. At Home/Chez Soi is a demonstration trial providing housing to homeless people with mental illnesses. The goal is to produce evidence about what works to improve housing stability and health for people with mental health issues. It is also being carried out in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal and Moncton.

“While research into social and environmental determinants of health is important, we also need to move towards designing and evaluating solution to help solve complex public health problems. I try to balance these two dimensions of public health research in my work,” he says.

Antony is recognized for contributing to the study of built-environmental determinants of health and wellbeing through his advances in spatial data collection.

“There is an urgent need to develop novel methods to represent the complexities of human behaviour and the built environment,” he says. “I draw on the disciplines of urban and health geography, environmental and social epidemiology, and GIS (Geographic Information Science). My approach is aimed at enabling researchers to build strong evidence that will guide healthy planning policies — urban planning, architecture, and urban design — to promote urban health.”

Dr. Brent E. Faught was raised on a family farm in Ontario’s Ottawa Valley. His natural curiosity, coupled with the farm-life lessons of working alongside his parents and siblings to harvest crops and milk cows, shape his teaching and research in epidemiology to this day.

“Farming is challenging because it’s unpredictable and ever-changing. We were taught to not just work hard, but to ‘work smart’ with reason and logic,” he says. “That logistical and practical sense is part of how I look at everything from helping students achieve their full potential to tackling interesting research questions in epidemiology. Those are also qualities that are really important to students who will find themselves on the frontline of public health challenges.”

His research expertise is in physical activity epidemiology. Funded by CIHR, Brent has invested significantly in examining the risk factors associated with children diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder. He has also researched concussion in minor hockey with funding from Hockey Canada and the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation.

Brent revels in working with talented faculty and staff, collaborating with scientists around the world, and being inspired by the enthusiasm of his students.

“My research blends into my lectures! I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with students and peers about my discoveries. This new knowledge often leads to more research inquiries and helps students embrace new opportunities and adventures. The thrill that comes with research is discovery, and sometimes, serendipitous moments when you discover something by pure accident.”

Brent was well suited to lead the design of the MPH online program — the first of its kind at Brock University — and to carry on as the MPH Graduate Program Director. His long-standing record of outstanding teaching includes an Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Teaching Award along with several excellence in teaching awards from Brock. Those awards recognize his contributions to curriculum innovation, new teaching technologies and experiential learning, in a range of courses such as population and clinical epidemiology, public health practicum and health sciences information technology.

“I’m an education innovator and big believer in experiential learning,” he says. “I love the fact that we have students doing practicums across Canada and beyond. It gives our MPH students a greater perspective of what public health means in terms of being a diverse, global community yet having similar challenges and opportunities.”

Dr. Pauli Gardner’s research is located at the intersection of health, aging and place. As a community-based public health researcher, communities, and in particular neighbourhoods and university campuses, are the living labs for her research.

In her work as a social gerontologist and qualitative health researcher, Pauli explores aging from a critical perspective to challenge assumptions about aging and disability, re-imagine practices and policies in community and care settings, and develop new ways of knowing that prioritize the lived experience of older adults.

Often described as a “walker stalker” Pauli’s mobility research has her following along (or chasing) older adults and observing them in their everyday environment. One of her most recent projects, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, explores the concept of mobility aid personalization (MAPx) — finding that older adults are more willing to use a mobility device once they give it their personal stamp customizing it to reflect their identity as well as meet their functional needs. Because sharing her work with others, particularly those outside of academia, is important to Paula, she created a blog The Mobility Project which provides a space for others to champion mobility and accessibility.

As an educator interested in supporting student wellness and academic success, Pauli also leads a program of research aimed at promoting positive mental health among university students. The purpose of The Mindfulness Experiment is to examine the impact of an in-class mediation practice on students, instructors and the classroom environment.  This work has received a great deal of attention from various audiences including the Niagara Region Public Health where she has accepted several invitations to present on the topic.

Pauli has a PhD in Public Health, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University, and faculty fellow and Continuing Education Coordinator with the Critical Qualitative Health Research Centre at the University of Toronto.  She has written and presented broadly on her methodological approach, most recently in a book chapter – Qualitative interviewing – More than asking questions”.

Pauli’s research and approach to teaching have been described as ‘innovative’, ‘interesting’ and ‘fun’.  She is the recipient of several teaching awards including the 2018 Faculty of Applied Health Sciences Award for Excellence in Teaching. Teaching for the Brock MPH program is an exciting opportunity for Pauli who challenges herself to use the full range of technologies an online format allows while also ensuring she builds a rapport and connects with her students.

Pauli’s research and approach to teaching have been described as ‘innovative’, ‘interesting’ and ‘fun’.  She is the recipient of several teaching awards including the 2018 Faculty of Applied Health Sciences Award for Excellence in Teaching. Teaching for the Brock MPH program is an exciting opportunity for Paula who challenges herself to use the full range of technologies an online format allows while also ensuring she builds a rapport and connects with her students.

Kate Harold completed her undergraduate degree at University of Toronto in Health Studies, and her Master of Public Health (MPH) at Western University.  

She currently works as a Program Consultant for the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). In this role she supports the implementation of Integrated Youth Services (IYS) across Ontario as part of Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (YWHO) and supports integrating health equity across all work related to providing mental health and addictions services to youth ages 12-25. 

She previously worked at Niagara Region Public Health & Emergency Services (NRPH&ES) for 5+ years, leading the health unit’s Health Equity Strategic Plan in her most recent role as the Strategic Initiatives Coordinator. In this role she led and actioned projects including the integration of sociodemographic data collection into a primary electronic medical record (EMR) system to better understand resident identities and unique needs and/or barriers to services. She has previously held positions working in health communications at the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Toronto and the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland

Dr. Samantha Hajna’s research is focused on understanding how the environments in which people live shape their health behaviours and impact their health – with the overall aim of generating epidemiological evidence that can be used to inform the design and delivery of interventions that promote public health. With expertise in the application of GIS to health research and interests in real-time monitoring of health behaviours (using wearables), physical activity, and the prevention of chronic disease risk, Samantha’s work spans a range of disciplines, including health geography and physical activity, environmental, and clinical epidemiology. 

Dr. Khowaja applies health economics modelling and mixed-methods research to inform policy decisions about resource allocation in healthcare. Specific areas he has researched include the economic impact of quality improvement initiatives in acute care facilities and long-term care homes, the cost-effectiveness of community-based interventions for maternal and newborn health, cost-efficacy of newborn screening, vaccine effectiveness, and patient-oriented research for measuring societal costs. Dr. Khowaja is recognized for his work nationally and internationally including a track record of scientific publications in high-impact journals (e.g., Pediatrics; World Health Organization Bulletin; Implementation Science; and BMC Health Services), noticeable media/press-releases (e.g., Podcasts by Niagara Chambers of Commerce and news in the New York Times) and highly competitive academic/scholarly awards (e.g., CIHR Vanier Doctoral Award, CIHR Health System Impact Postdoctoral Fellowship, and funding support from Tri-council).   

In health economics, it is imperative to understand factors such as, socio-demographic diversity, cultural acceptability, financial affordability, and program-feasibility concerning the spread, scale-up and sustainability of health technologies. Dr. Khowaja’s study confirming the importance of investing in team-based model of care was reported in the Critical Care Medicine in 2022. This research highlighted a total of $50 million in net savings attributed to sepsis care in British Columbia. In another study, one of the trainees mentored by Dr. Khowaja’s reported on the cost-effectiveness of Smart Triage (i.e., a point-of-care digital triage platform) for pediatric sepsis in Uganda (Li E., Grays… Khowaja, 2021, PLOS One; and Li, Tagoola…Khowaja, 2023, BMC Health Services Research).  

“Students learn better when they are exposed to case-studies, reflect on their experiences, and network with peers and leaders in the field,” he says. Dr. Khowaja wants his students to get ready for a real-life marathon, as they appreciate the journey, celebrate small successes, and ultimately get to the finish line with greater confidence.  

Dr. Khowaja’s courses provide students with extensive networking opportunities to learn and master people-to-people skills, interpersonal communication, team building, and public speaking. “I notice that some students in my class are shy (or introverted) and have a fear of public-facing/speaking. This is a particular observation I have in the first-year classes. I can imagine most of these students completed high school while working from home and/or computers- perhaps the unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. I tell my students the good news that networking or public speaking is not a ‘talent’ people are born with or ‘given’ to them; it is ‘made,’ as a result of continued practice,” he quotes for explaining about the networking experiences. 

The learning from professional development activities and networking opportunities tremendously helps prepare students for exciting career opportunities. His best advice to students is to have fun and be yourself. Networking and approaching things with a growth mindset are the key to success! 

Dr. Madelyn Law is as passionate about creating high-performance health systems as she is about guiding students to become high-performing health professionals. 

Madelyn channels that passion into building partnerships and relationships within the health sector and opening avenues of opportunities in which she and her students can make a difference to public health practice and acute care services. 

Her research is focused on organizational culture and change management to enhance the quality — safety, accessibility, effectiveness —of existing systems. This work has led her to contribute to quality improvement projects alongside professionals in a variety of areas including public health, acute care, rehabilitation, primary care, and community care settings. Madelyn’s research has been recognized with funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Public Health Ontario, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and Canadian Medical Protective Association. 

As a teacher, Madelyn provides vision and leadership to expand experiential learning at Brock. 

“The real driver for me is understanding how to create deeper learning,” she says, “Deeper learning is best achieved by engaging students in meaningful activities that allows them to apply the theory and concepts that they are learning.” 

She is the founder and Director of the highly successful Interprofessional Education for Quality Improvement Program. Started at Brock in 2012, I-EQUIP matches students with health organizations to carry out projects to enhance health services design and delivery. Given the partnership she created with Niagara health, she was seconded for two years to provide leadership as the Director of Quality, Patient Safety and Risk (2023-2025).  

Dr. Jian Liu contributes his intensive training in biostatistics and epidemiology to help address public health concerns across the lifespan.

“I really enjoy doing research on topics related to public health because this not only allows me to apply statistics to test research hypotheses, but the results from these studies also make a contribution to improve people’s health,” says Jian, who has past experience working as a biostatistician in provincial government.

One of his special interests is in the area of early life experience and cardiovascular risk. He has been part of research projects, conducted in the Niagara region, to investigate the prevalence of children and adolescents who are overweight or obese, are physically inactive, and have poor diet and eating habits — all factors that raise concerns for a higher cardiovascular risk profile.

These studies identified that more than one-fourth of youths in Niagara were overweight or obese and attributed this to factors such as family eating environment, food items selection, skipping breakfast behaviour, and sleep problems. The results were invaluable to developing and implementing prevention and intervention strategies to mitigate school-age obesity.

Jian also is examining the impact of depression on seniors’ chronic diseases. His work involves analysing data collected as part of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). The study is a long-term national project to gather information from approximately 50,000 men and women between the ages of 45 and 85, about the changing biological, medical, psychological, social lifestyle and economic aspects of their lives as they age.

“With a rapidly aging population increase in Canada, the results from this study may provide information for prevention and intervention among Canadian seniors on chronic diseases related to depression,” says Jian.

As a teacher, Jian recognizes the challenge that biostatistics presents to many students.

“It’s extremely satisfying to encourage students to overcome this challenge by helping them understand how statistics works. The best way to do that is through practice so that they can see how the application of statistical concepts can help to solve real world problems. It boosts their confidence and it adds to their passion and will for epidemiology/biostatistics research.”

Izabella Ludwa easily relates to the demands and pressures facing MPH students.

It wasn’t all that long ago that she was in their shoes.

As the MPH Program Coordinator, Izabella says her experience as a student, juggling studies and family, gives her a huge perspective into how best to provide support to MPH students.

Izabella spent the best part of her accomplished student career at Brock. She took her undergrad degree at the University of Toronto and then came to Brock for her masters in kinesiology so that she could study with Dr. Nota Klentrou. She moved on to her PhD work — in fact, she was Brock’s first PhD student in Applied Health Sciences.

It was not an easy journey for the mother of two children, ages 2 and 7, to get to Convocation day in October 2016, and walk across the stage and receive her PhD degree

“I had my second child only nine days before the ceremony,” she says. “It was quite the journey, a long adventure and I couldn’t have done it without the help of some truly amazing people.”

Izabella is thrilled to have an opportunity to work at Brock in a role through which she can pay forward the support she received to persevere and succeed at her academic goals.

She’s a master of multi-tasking with responsibilities that span the moment a student shows interest in the program to the moment they receive their degrees. She’s at the frontline of recruitment, registration, admissions, course calendar, timetables, academic advising, student services and of managing the MPH Sakai learning management site. As well, she helps students research practicum options and apply for placements.

“In this role, I always keep in mind the resources and support that were available to me to navigate and negotiate next steps,” she says. “And, I ask myself, what else can I do, what else can I provide to students that will help them get to where they want to go.”

Izabella has a strong health sciences background that includes her master’s and doctoral research that focused on investigating the bone-muscle interaction during growth and development in children.

She is naturally suited to MPH course and curriculum topics.

Dr. Adam MacNeil recognizes there is a lot at stake for students, teachers and researchers whose work is focused on global public health threats. The strength of public health breakthroughs, says the immunologist, comes out of fostering excellence through the linkages between learning and the latest scientific advancements.

“Without health, we have nothing. Teaching and doing research are inseparable. Doing both well breeds success for the student, instructor, research program, institution, and community at large,” says Adam who is a past winner of the Brock University Award for Excellence in Teaching for Early Career Faculty.

“To do research well, means continual learning at the leading edge of the literature and effectively passing critical aspects of that knowledge to your students, colleagues, and co-workers so that the community, as a whole, benefits. Likewise, in the classroom, course content is shaped year by year as research in the field progresses. Being an effective teacher means encouraging engagement with the latest body of knowledge so that our students understand what is known and what remains to be determined.”

Adam has an impressive record of research that touches on a number of pressing global health issues.

His work in the area of infection control is primarily focused on the interface between microbes and how the immune system responds to them. His early research centered around immunodeficiency, has led him into other directions. For example, his laboratory is currently investigating novel immune responses to Zika virus as a way of better understanding these vector-borne infections and what immune players might modulate the site of infection toward better infection control strategies.

He’s had a long-time interest in experimental vaccine development. He spent part of his postdoctoral fellowship developing a novel vaccine platform that leverages the immune system’s recognition of virus-like particles in an effort to focus its attention on breast cancer cells hiding in plain sight. His passion for this research continues today given the current issues around vaccine hesitancy and misinformation.

He also has an innovative study under way into the allergy epidemic. With support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund, Adam and his team are using leading-edge biomedical methods and technology to look at the fundamental processes driving allergic inflammation.

“My team is investigating how we respond to an allergen and the role key participating players are taking at a molecular and cellular level so that we may translate that knowledge to the benefit of the hundreds of millions worldwide suffering from these inappropriate immune responses.”

Dr. Sinéad McElhone is setting the course for Niagara Region Public Health (NRPH) to navigate today’s oceans of health data in order to achieve the best outcomes for residents of all ages.

Sinéad is the NRPH’s Manager of Surveillance and Evaluation. She leads a team of data- and information-related professionals including epidemiologists, medical informatics specialists, data analysts, a statistician and a geospatial health specialist. They have a challenging role in applying modern data analytics techniques to new and historical data sources, as part of the department’s surveillance and health assessment initiatives.

“We’re grappling with the diversity of data now available, the governance associated with these new and traditional data sources and how to transform these data into usable insights to support decision making to improve the health of local populations,” Sinéad explains.

Sinéad recently led a massive 18-month examination of health data by the NRPH. The project applied a “life course” approach to looking at nearly 50,000 lines of data about Niagara residents across the lifespan. She shared highlights of the study as the co-author of a policy brief, “The Future of Niagara’s Health: Using a Life-Course Approach to Improve Well-Being.”

“The life-course perspective offers a transformational way of looking at health, not as disconnected stages unrelated to each other, but as an integrated continuum,” Sinéad explains. “Presenting data using this approach identifies times at which health and social care organizations can effectively provide targeted interventions during key life periods to have the largest impact on health and well-being.”

Her team also places a heavy focus on health equity and the concept of identifying the prevalence of key health issues such as diabetes, cancer and sexually transmitted infections in various demographic groups.

Sinéad began working for NRPH after emigrating to Canada in 2013 with her husband and two children.

She has an undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition and a PhD in a large-scale epidemiological study of obesity in children and adolescents, from Ulster University in Northern Ireland. She was a post-doc research fellow in the area of child obesity at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Sinéad also spent six years as a Senior Lecturer, in the areas of nutrition, epidemiology and public health, at Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, England.

“When I moved to Canada I wished to retain my teaching skills and competencies,” she says. “At the same time, I was very interested in creating strong working partnerships between Brock’s Health Sciences department and NRPH to benefit students, researchers, NRPH and the population of Niagara.”

Dr. Valerie Michaelson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University. As a White settler scholar who often works in Indigenous partnerships, to the best of her abilities she is committed to the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and to reciprocity, respect, responsibility, and authentic relationships. She is honoured when she has the opportunity to work with First Nations, Métis and Inuit colleagues, students, and community partners, and these reciprocal relations are centred in her research and teaching. 

In terms of research, Dr. Michaelson brings a critical social justice lends to her focus on the social dimensions of health. Her overall goals are to advance understanding of (1) how different social, structural, and cultural contexts shape health and well-being, and (2) how the unequal distribution of health promoting resources shapes health inequities. She leads and collaborates with diverse, transdisciplinary teams that include scholars from a range of disciplines (from the bench sciences to the arts and humanities to social scientists). She also works with community members who hold relevant lived experiences, including young people. Building and nurturing authentic, meaningful, and reciprocal research partnerships is core to her approach. She prioritizes the co-creation of knowledge with the goal of engaging in research that drives social change.  

Current projects include: 

• A mixed methods exploration of gendered differences in mental health in Canadian young people 
• A multi-disciplinary collaboration in which she works with artists and scientists to develop an arts-based Applied Theatre intervention to stop health system discrimination. 
• An ongoing program of research that examines the social, cultural, and religious norms that rationalize or normalize harmful health behaviours or attitudes, and that lead to deleterious health outcomes. This project was developed as a response to addressing Call to Action 6 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. 
• A mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) exploration of the spiritual dimensions of health as determinants of health equity. 

Dr. Miya Narushima has always been passionate about reading and listening to stories. Being a qualitative researcher is second nature to her.

By asking the “how” and “why” questions, Miya uncovers underlying factors — unique psychological, social, cultural, systemic, and structural causes — that determine our health.

“Qualitative research can help us understand the lived experiences and perceptions of individuals and communities through rich and contextual data,” says Miya. “It provides us with in-depth analytical lenses to improve health and social care services, better aligning them with the socioeconomic and cultural realities of their target groups.”

Her goal as a teacher is to help students learn how to ask questions and, equally important, how to listen effectively.

“It’s important for students to acquire step-by-step hands-on experience of qualitative research on a current topic in public health,” she says. “Students will learn to be better interviewers as well as better listeners through practicing their active listening and probing skills in an in-depth qualitative interview for their own projects.”

Miya completed her doctoral training at the OISE/University of Toronto in the area of adult education and community development, fields which largely overlap with the health promotion discipline.

Her research activity has two main themes — to investigate factors that help develop an individual’s capabilities, and to create supportive social environments that increase health equity among people with diverse backgrounds. For example, she has led research projects that focus on community-based educational activities to promote health in older adults and migrants.

“I am particularly passionate about promoting healthy aging and well-being through facilitating various community-based later-life activities such as lifelong learning and volunteering in order to realize an age-friendly society where people could have a full life,” Miya adds.

“Aging and well-being has been always my central interest. After joining the public health program at Brock, I’ve gained more opportunities to strengthen the connection between my research and teaching areas through working with colleagues and students in the public health field.”

She particularly enjoys working with MPH students.

“They are a diverse group who come from different professions, regions, and perspectives. They bring their own resources into the course, that creates a productive non-threatening peer-to-peer learning experience that encompasses the students, the TA, and the instructor alike.”

Dr. William Pickett is a Professor of Epidemiology and Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock, where he teaches epidemiological methods and engages in research focused on the health of specific populations. His most longstanding research focus is on the health of farm and rural populations, where he has conducted descriptive, etiological, and evaluative studies aimed at the prevention of major injury and other leading health outcomes nationally and internationally. He is also one of the Canadian lead investigators on an international study called “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children”, which involves tracking the health of adolescents in Canada and comparing their experiences with their peers in 50 other countries. To that end, he holds multiple grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada focused on specific determinants of young people’s health. He has supervised more than 100 graduate students over the years on thesis projects. And his research has taken him to many parts of the world, to engage in collaborative efforts to optimize health in these at-risk populations. 

My research program is applied in nature and examines how the development and implementation of formal and informal policies have an impact on given populations in the context of both health and higher education. The major themes of my work centre on evidence-based policy development and implementation as a framework for health at a population level. I believe that effective policy is made when it is co-constructed with its users being included in the decision-making of its creation and implementation. At the heart of my work is positively impacting health through public health research that promotes health at a population health level through effective policy, and the social determinants that shape health trajectories. Using a systems level approach to understand implementation processes, my work investigates the impact these have on the lived experience of a given population within those systems, from a population health perspective. I am especially interested in the intersection of evidence-based policy implementation with real-world impacts that support mental health and wellness across the lifespan, within the context of people’s lives and social determinants of health. 

Primarily a qualitative researcher, I have experience in both qualitative and mixed methods research methods, scoping, systematic, and rapid reviews. I also have experience with Participatory Action Research and Scoping Reviews with Locally Driven Collaborative Projects (LDCP) that includes Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) research through Public Health Ontario (PHO) and thirty-four participating Public Health Units (PHU’s) across Ontario. 

 Much of my research has also been focused on supporting student success and pedagogy in higher education. Central to this research, I am particularly interested in evaluating the implementation of system-wide, mental health policies and initiatives aimed at improving student health and wellness. 

As a teacher, I bring concern for student success. I enjoy teaching and I care about students learning and success. I believe in reciprocity, learner-centered pedagogy that is experiential and engaged, uses active learning strategies, and is reflective. 

My research specializes in bio-behavioural surveys of socially marginalized populations such as people who inject drugs, female sex workers, and prisoners, as well as health and clinical disparity analysis. I have used HIV surveillance data for program evaluation, population size estimation, and modelling. I have served as PI, Co-PI, Co-Investigator, and Consultant on many research projects, and have published over 150 peer-reviewed papers. 

I have designed and led various study designs including mixed-methods, cross-sectional surveys, validation studies, cohorts, case-control, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and modelling studies. My work involves the application of statistical methods to analyze data from complex surveys, national case-based surveillances, multi-site cohorts, and systematic reviews, applying approaches such as regression modelling, multi-level models, longitudinal data analysis, meta-analysis, and latent class analysis. 

I am also interested in using real-world data (RWD) to produce real-world evidence (RWE), and in conducting comparative effectiveness research (CER) using existing data sources such as claims data, electronic medical records (EMR), and registries. This allows for the analysis of healthcare resource utilization, medical and prescription costs, and the burden of illness (BOI). My research interests include methodological approaches such as matching-adjusted indirect comparison (MAIC) and using single-arm trials with an external control arm (ECA) sourced from real-world clinical settings and registries, through applying advanced statistical methods such as propensity score-based analyses, including propensity score matching (PSM) and inverse probability treatment weighting (IPTW). 

Dr. Martin Tammemägi is giving many lung cancer patients a new lease on life.

Martin is recognized internationally for his long-term research in developing and improving a lung cancer predication model as an effective tool in predicting a person’s likelihood of developing lung cancer. His original discovery was published in 2013 in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

“My career in cancer research has been a natural fit,” he says. “Cancer is a major public health problem, so warrants vigorous efforts. Also, cancer remains an enigma, and if you enjoy problem solving and tackling mysteries, solving cancer problems will challenge you.”

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in North America and in the world. Five-year survival rates for lung cancer are only about 17 per cent. This is because lung cancer is usually diagnosed after symptoms have appeared and the disease is at such an advanced stage that it is no longer amenable to surgical cure.

Martin’s national study confirming the effectiveness of the model was reported in The Lancet Oncology in 2017. With funding from the Terry Fox Research Institute and Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, the research team recruited 2,537 participants, current and former smokers between the ages of 50 and 75 who were identified to be at risk for developing lung cancer after filling out the risk prediction calculator. They were offered computed tomography (CT scan) lung screening at the start of the study, after one year, after four years and with additional follow-ups. Results showed that the model detected lung cancers in 6.5 per cent of the study’s participants. Of those, 75 per cent of these lung cancers were potentially curable early Stage 1 or 2.

“In fact, we found more lung cancers than expected,” says Martin. “The prediction model is a tool that is very successful at identifying individuals at risk of developing lung cancer at an early, curable stage when combined with low dose CT screening.”

In March 2019, in the journal JAMA Network Open, Martin announced that he had come up with a more powerful model, showing for the first-time the impact of combining the original model data with results of computed tomography (CT) lung screening scans.

“The inclusion of screening results to the model helps better select individuals who would benefit from screening and informs them whether they need to go for screening or how often they need to continue screening,” he says.

In ongoing work, Martin is co-leader of the TFRI-funded “The Terry Fox Pan-Canadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer Study: Extension” project. The idea is to detect lung cancer at an early, potentially curable stage by encouraging people at risk to go for lung cancer screening and improving lung cancer screening programs. The current study is looking at whether air pollution and genetic information can further improve our risk prediction model. He is also the Scientific Lead on Cancer Care Ontario’s lung cancer screening pilot.

As well, he collaborates with researchers from around the world such as U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia. His prediction model for the detection of lung cancer nodules in CT scanning is recommended for use by The American College of Radiology and the British Thoracic Society Guidelines.

My research interests include public health practice, program evaluation, school health, school nutrition policy, and child and youth health. The goal of my research is to understand how the environments we occupy – where we live, work and play – impact our health. I primarily use qualitative methods when conducting my research. Most recently, my research has focused on the nutrition policy environment in Ontario secondary schools, health literacy, and the mental health of adolescents. I also focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education.

I completed a PhD in Health Geography (McMaster University ’13), and an MA in Sociology (Acadia University ’06). I hold the Credentialed Evaluator designation from the Canadian Evaluation Society, and after completing my PhD, was employed as an Evaluation Specialist at Public Health Ontario.