Featured Speakers

PHABC is thrilled to feature the following speakers for our 2022 Conference, “Our Planet, Our Health: Creating Well-Being Societies and Making Peace with Nature.”

Our speakers include Dr. Danièle Behn Smith, the Province’s Aboriginal Health Physician Advisor. She works closely alongside Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Provincial Health Officer. In support of the Ministry’s strategic agenda, Dr. Behn Smith focuses on closing the gap in health outcomes between First Nations and other British Columbians.

We are also pleased to feature Sione Tu’itahi, the Executive Director of the Health Promotion Forum of New Zealand, Runanga Whakapiki Ake I Te Hauora o Aotearoa (HPF). Sione is also the first Indigenous person to be elected as the Global President of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE). He will be connecting virtually from New Zealand.

The list of speakers continues to grow with high-calibre profiles:

• Dr. Tim K. Takaro is a Professor Emeritus and Physician-Scientist in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University;
• Jeff Masuda is a Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria and former Canada Research Chair in Environmental Health Equity;
• Dr. Chris Buse is an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.

Stay tuned to PHABC’s social media channels and website as we prepare to release the agenda for the two day conference early next week. We have been working diligently at designing an interactive and enlightening conference!

Read Speakers’ Biographies

Conference Details

Dates: November 9th and 10th
Venue: Victoria Conference Centre
Address: 720 Douglas Street Victoria, BC

Early-Bird Registration

Dr. Tim K. Takaro

Dr. Takaro is a Professor Emeritus and Physician-Scientist in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.

He is husband to Aggie Black and father to Annie and Ben.

He trained in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Public Health and Toxicology, at Yale, the University of North Carolina and the University of Washington. Dr. Takaro’s research is primarily about the links between human exposures and disease, and determining effective public health based preventive solutions to such risks.

Planetary change poses complex problems for public health never more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges demand an interdisciplinary approach both in research and action.

To this end, Takaro is a member the Planetary Health Research group at SFU and a Lead Author of the Health Canada 2022 report, Health of Canadians in a Changing Climate: Advancing Knowledge for Action.

His current research program explores the impacts of resource extraction on human health and the relationship to our land and waters.

With immense gratitude to the First Peoples he is beginning to use Indigenous knowledge to relearn environmental health as he tests different interventions in climate action and planet protection.

See the full list of PHABC’s 2022 Conference speakers here.

Sione Tu’itahi

Sione Tu’itahi is the Executive Director of the Health Promotion Forum of New Zealand, Runanga Whakapiki Ake I Te Hauora o Aotearoa (HPF).

Sione is the first Indigenous person to be elected as the Global President of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE).

IUHPE is a global professional non-governmental organisation dedicated to health promotion around the world. For more than 70 years, IUHPE has operated an independent, global, professional network of people and institutions committed to improving the health and wellbeing of the people through education, community action and the development of healthy public policy.

As an Educator, Writer, and International Health Promotion Leader, his areas of interest in health promotion include planetary health, determinants of health, human rights, Indigenous knowledge, community development, public policy, and workforce development.

As a former Journalist and Broadcaster, Sione is the author of several books, academic papers, and children’s stories. As a voluntary Community Worker, he is a member of several national advisory groups in the education, health, and community sectors. He is also a Poet.

In recognition of his significant contributions to health promotion and public health at the national and international levels, Sione was given the 2019 New Zealand Public Health Champion Award by the Public Health Association of New Zealand.

See the full list of PHABC’s 2022 Conference speakers here.

Jeff Masuda

Jeff Masuda is a Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria and former Canada Research Chair in Environmental Health Equity.

A human geographer by training, Jeff is known for his work in environmental justice, urban health inequalities, participatory action research, and critical health promotion.

Jeff’s research currently focusses on tenant organization for housing justice, including increasing concerns over extreme heat vulnerability, particularly through his role in the Right to Remain Research Collective.

His research also centres on land stewardship as a pathway for urban decolonization through his involvement in A SHARED Future, an international collaboration on Indigenous renewable energy leadership.

Jeff’s academic specialty also spotlights other issues at the intersection of the social and ecological dimensions of health.

Jeff presently leads a standing special section in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, which highlights climate change and health equity.

See the full list of PHABC’s 2022 Conference speakers here.

Dr. Chris Buse

Dr. Chris Buse is an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.

Dr. Buse’s research operates at the interface of the social and ecological determinants of health, aiming to redress the differential and often avoidable exposures to the ill-health effects of environmental changes which are worsened by systemic forms of socioeconomic marginalization and oppression.

His research program is underpinned by a focus on environmental health justice, and is animated by two inter-related areas of interest: the impact of climate change on health equity and the public health response; and the health impacts of natural resource development.

Dr. Buse has held numerous competitive awards and high-profile research positions, including as Senior Research Scientist and CIHR-funded Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Environmental Assessment Research, and MSFHR Postdoctoral Fellow and Inaugural Lead Researcher for the University of Northern British Columbia’s Cumulative Impacts Research Consortium.

He holds a PhD in Public Health from the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, a MA in Sociology from the University of British Columbia, and a BA in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Alberta.

See the full list of PHABC’s 2022 Conference speakers here.

Dr. Courtney Howard

Dr. Howard is an Emergency Physician in Chief Drygeese Territory, and a globally recognized leader on the impacts of climate change on human and planetary health.

She has advanced policy and advocacy on active transport, ecoanxiety, movement-building, plant-rich diets, fossil fuel divestment, carbon pricing, coal phase-out, hydraulic fracturing, vaccine equity, and health impact assessments.

She led the 2017-2019 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Briefings for Canadian Policymakers, was the 2018 international policy director for the Lancet Countdown, and has researched wildfires and menstrual cups.

Dr. Howard is Past-president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and sits on the boards of the Canadian Medical Association and the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

She is part of the Steering Committee of the Planetary Health Alliance, the WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate Change and Health and the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Lancet Planetary Health and the Journal of Climate Change and Health. She is delighted to be spending 2022/2023 in the UK completing a Master in Public Policy at Oxford.

When not deep in a literature review or seeing patients in the ER, Dr Howard can often be found enjoying the great outdoors and dancing with her two daughters.

See the full list of PHABC’s 2022 Conference speakers here.