Meet our team.

Cecilia Benoit

Cecilia Benoit is of Mi’kmaw and French ancestry and a non-status member of the Qalipu First Nation. She is currently a Scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Research and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Victoria. She works closely with those in need of services, frontline service providers, and other stakeholders to develop innovative interventions to promote equity, dignity and human rights care for the disadvantaged groups with which she is privileged to work.

Ivy Bourgeault

Ivy Bourgeault is a Professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa. She leads the Canadian Health Workforce Network and the Empowering Women Leaders in Health initiative. Dr. Bourgeault has garnered an international reputation for her research on the health workforce, particularly from a gender lens.

Nancy Côté

Nancy Côté is an assistant professor in the sociology department at Laval University and a researcher at VITAM, a research center in sustainable health at Laval University affiliated with the CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale. She is co-leader of the Environment axis: living and working environments. She is also a Researcher-Fellow-Junior 1 of the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Santé (FRQS). Her work is in the fields of sociology of work and organizations. She is particularly interested in the challenges posed by the transformations of organizations and health systems on professionals and managers in this sector. She also has extensive research expertise in partnership with clinical circles and the management of the health and social services network.

Emilie Dionne

Emilie Dionne is a sociologist of health, feminist epistemologist and health services researcher at VITAM – Centre de recherche en santé durable of Université Laval and Centre Universitaire Intégré des Services Sociaux et de Santé de la Capitale-Nationale (CIUSSS-CN). Dre Dionne uses her expertise in feminist theory and critical disability, sexuality, race and aging studies and applies the lens of intersectionality to study care practices, the care relationship and the organization of care practices.

Christopher J. Fries

Christopher J. Fries is a social and behavioural health scientist currently at the University of Manitoba who researches health lifestyles and behaviour, embodiment, critical public health, the social determinants of health, medical pluralism, and medicalization. He is the co-author of a leading Canadian textbook of health sociology (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2017).

Hasu Ghosh

Hasu Ghosh is a Research Policy Analyst at the Science Policy Directorate of the Strategic Policy Branch of Health Canada and an Adjunct Professor of the Department of Public Health, Concordia University of Edmonton. At Health Canada, her primary responsibilities fall under the area of intra and interdepartmental liaison (e.g. Tri-Agencies and Health Portfolio members) on a range of current and emerging science and research policy issues related to human health. Hasu’s research experiences span over the area of Indigenous and minority health, urban Indigenous health, mental health and addiction, access to care for co-morbid health conditions, health equity, and health promotion and disease prevention.

Neeru Gupta

Dr. Neeru Gupta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton. She obtained her PhD in Demography at Université de Montréal in 2000. Her research interests are grounded in optimizing gender and social equity towards achieving the Quadruple Aim for healthcare improvement: healthy populations, sustainable healthcare investments, and better patient and provider experiences.

Angela Mashford-Pringle

Dr. Angela Mashford-Pringle is an Algonquin (Timiskaming First Nation) Assistant Professor and Associate Director at the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health, Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Mashford-Pringle worked for over a decade at the federal government in Indigenous initiatives.

Elena Neiterman

Elena Neiterman is a continuing lecturer at the School of Public Health and Health Systems of the University of Waterloo. Her research examines women’s reproductive health issues, sociology of the body, work and health, and qualitative research methods. .

Jungwee Park

Jungwee Park is a senior research analyst in Health Analysis Division at Statistics Canada. Trained as a medical sociologist/demographer (Ph.D. 1994 Brown U), he has conducted a number of research on the social determinants of health, particularly in the context of vulnerable population groups. Using population-based surveys, administrative records, and linked data sources, many of his recent research projects have had a special focus on the relationships between labour market conditions and health.

Nicole Power

Nicole Power is Professor in the Sociology Department at Memorial University. Her research has examined the gendered and health and safety impacts of industrial, economic and environmental restructuring on workers in rural communities, focusing primarily on fisheries workers, young workers, and skilled trades workers, and more recently is examining work-related psychological health and safety among correctional officers and academic workers.

Cristian Rangel

Dr. Rangel is a medical sociologist with an interest in SDH, health equity and democratic deliberation. He is a qualitative methodologist whose work draws from both classical and critical social theories, such as queer theory, STS and intersectional approaches. His current work investigates the impact of digital technologies in two fields: healthcare workers' training and clinical workflow, and the impact of digital and biomedical technologies on queer subjectivities and sexual health.

Terry Wade

Terry Wade is a Professor of Health Sciences at Brock University. His research focuses on the social determinants of child health moving past basic statistical associations to understand the processes involved in linking social-structural disadvantage to health outcomes across the life course. His work is interdisciplinary in nature linking social determinants to physiological development.

Ingrid Waldron

Dr. Ingrid Waldron is Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Global Peace and Social Justice Program in the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University. From 2008 to 2021, she was a Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University.

 Dr. Waldron’s research, teaching and community advocacy work focus on environmental racism, climate justice, mental illness, COVID-19, and the structural and environmental determinants of health disparities in Black, Indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities.

 Dr. Waldron is the founder and Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project), which inspired the federal private members bill a National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice (Bill C-230). Her Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water is based on her book of the same name and was co-produced by Waldron, actor Elliot Page, Ian Daniel, and Julia Sanderson. Dr. Waldron is also the co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice, which has brought together organizations in the environmental, climate and social justice sectors to share expertise and resources to address environmental racism, climate change and other social injustices in Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities across Canada.

Emma Whelan

Emma Whelan is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and the Gender & Women’s Studies program at Dalhousie University. Her research focuses on claimsmaking practices in health, particularly concerning medical standards, chronic illness, and gender; and on moral regulation in medicine and public health. She is currently working on a book about hand washing campaigns and the individualization of responsibility in public health.

Sanni Yaya

Sanni Yaya is a Full Professor and Vice President International and Francophone at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Yaya is a distinguished health economist and global health expert known for his influential studies of maternal and child health around the world. His path-breaking work and scholarship have been noted for its careful integration of theory and practice, its attention to important social concerns, and its examination of systems of privilege and discrimination.