Public Health Summer Institute 2020
Think Globally, Act Locally
Public Health and the Anthropocene
Thank you All for an Excellent 2020 Public Health Summer Institute!
Please stay tuned for the release of the post-summer institute resource package & the call for abstracts for the 2020 fall PHABC conference!
Scientific Program Committee
We are pleased to introduce Dr. Trevor Hancock and Dr. Maya Gislason, our Scientific Program Committee co-chairs. They have worked tirelessly with the rest of our committee to oversee the development of this year’s program and as such we would like to take this time to thank everyone involved with putting on the 2020 summer institute. This event would not have been possible without the contributions and countless hours of work from the following individuals.
Dr. Trevor Hancock – SPC Co-Chair
Professor & Senior Scholar (Retired) School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria
Dr. Trevor Hancock is a public health physician, health promotion consultant and recently (July 2018) retired Professor and Senior Scholar at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. His main areas of interest are population health promotion, healthy cities and communities, public health, healthy public policy, environment and health, healthy and ‘green’ hospitals, health policy and planning, and health futurism.
Trevor is one of the founders of the (now global) Healthy Cities and Communities movement and co-authored the original background paper for the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization in 1986. Over the past 30 years he has worked as a consultant for local communities, municipal, provincial and national governments, health care organizations, NGOs and the World Health Organization. He is a frequent keynote speaker at national and international conferences as well as small community group engagements and since the end of 2014 has written a regular weekly column on population and public health for Victoria’s Times Colonist.
He has a long-standing interest in the relationship between health and the natural and built environment. For four years Trevor led a Canadian Public Health Association workgroup that has resulted in a comprehensive Discussion Paper on the ecological determinants health (May 2015). he has been a member of the Canadian Council on the Social Determinants of Health, a member of the Board of the Child and Nature Alliance of Canada from 2010 to 2015, and is currently on the Advisory Council of the Arts and Health Network Canada. Trevor is the Vice-President of the Board of BC Healthy Communities, co-founded both the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment & the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, and in the 1980’s Trevor was the first leader of the Green Party in both Canada and Ontario.
In 2015 Trevor was awarded Honourary Fellowship in the UK’s Faculty of Public Health for his contributions to public health, and in 2017 he was awarded the Defries Medal – the Association’s highest honour – by the Canadian Public Health Association.
Outside work life, he is an enthusiastic Morris dancer and enjoys creating new dances and parody songs, as well as performing as the Green Man in the annual Mummers Play and at the annual Jack in the Green Festival in Hastings, UK. He has also been a semi-professional outdoor photographer and his photography has been shown in a number of juried art shows in southern Ontario and BC.
Dr. Maya Gislason– SPC Co-Chair
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Dr. Gislason joined FHS in September 2014 as an Assistant Professor with a focus on health equity. Prior to this, she was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada with a focus on researching the intersections between public health and intensive resource extraction. Dr. Gislason holds a doctorate in Sociology (Medical Sociology) from the University of Sussex, UK, a Masters in Sociology and a double major in Sociology and Women’s Studies both from the University of Victoria, BC, Canada.
A longstanding champion of ecosystem approaches to health, Dr. Gislason works upstream on public health issues by addressing the interconnection between human, animal and ecosystem health alongside her colleagues and community partners, including the First Nations Health Authority. She teaches on and guides research teams in developing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) informed evidence generating tools, is a Sex and Gender Champion on tri-agency funded research, and is actively engaged in the dynamic space of intersectionality research and Gender-based Analysis Plus approaches to policy formation and evidence building. Dr. Gislason applies these tools and process to research on the impacts of climate change on diverse populations, addressing the environmental and community health impacts of intensive resource extraction on rural, remote, northern and Indigenous communities in Canada, and ultimately to advance the shared goal of Planetary Health.
A defining characteristic of Dr. Gislason’s research is the integration of social inequities in health scholarship with ecosystem approaches to health, which is employed in order to strengthen environmental and community health. Dr. Gislason currently works on two large scale and interacting eco-social public health issues which are significantly influencing health and wellbeing in Canada and internationally — climate change and intensive resource extraction. As an interdisciplinary equity scholar working in the health sciences, she values the process of building strong bridges between science and society. At the core of her expanding research program and scholarly activity; therefore, is a commitment to connecting theory to practice and using knowledge produced through primary research to help address real world challenges.
The impact of Dr. Gislason’s work is not only expressed through classical academic activities, such as publications and university teaching and service, but also through contributing to shifts in what is considered ‘good evidence’ and how science can inform policy formation and practice. Some of this work is found in evidence briefs, knowledge syntheses and reports to government and its impacts are reflected in how evidence is gathered and used by communities, government partners, in policy and practice development and within the research community.
Scientific Program Committee Members
| Shannon Turner | Executive Director, Public Health Association of BC |
| Maureen Rowan | Capacity Building Committee Co-Chair, Public Health Association of BC |
| Christina Harding | Project Coordinator, Public Health Association of BC |
| Chris Munkacsi | Administrative Officer, Public Health Association of BC |
| Dr. Irving Rootman | Health Promotion Consultant |
| Dr. Margot Parkes | Associate Professor, School of Health Sciences, University of Northern BC |
| Dr. Wanda Martin | Assistant Professor, College of Nursing, University of Saskatchewan |
| Nicole Braun | Population Health Promotion Practitioner, Saskatchewan Cancer Agency |
| Sarah Prowse | Community Health Services Specialist, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority |
| Hannah Moffatt | Population Health Equity Initiatives Leader, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority |
| Amy Hickmott Foster | MPH Student, School of Public Health, University of Alberta |
| Pemma Muzumdar | Knowledge Translation Specialist, NCC for the Determinants of Health |
| Dr. Samantha Salter |
Epidemiologist, Health & Social Services, Government of Yukon |
| Jordyn Warkentin | Summer Student, Saskatchewan Public Health Assocaition |