2024 Highlights

A Year in Review

Over the past year, EpiBio successfully managed transitions, hosted events, and achieved many milestones. Some key highlights include:

We are excited to welcome the newest members to the EpiBio family – Dr. Jamie Seabrook, Dr. Francisco Olea-Popelka and Dr. Cheryl Currie.

Before joining us, Dr. Jamie Seabrook was Chair and Professor in the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at Brescia University College. His research focuses on the social determinants of child health disparities and adolescent substance use.

Dr. Francisco Olea-Popelka is the Beryl Ivey Endowed Chair in One Health. His research program focuses on evaluating factors impacting health at the intersection of humans, wildlife, and domestic species in different environments, globally

Dr. Cheryl Currie was instrumental in leading the development of the MSc Public Health Program from 2018 to 2021 at the University of Lethbridge. She developed the first Indigenous health course at the University of Lethbridge and advocated for it to become a required component of the Public Health program.
We look forward to the valuable contributions and achievements that our diverse group of cross-appointed and adjunct members will bring to EpiBio.

We would also like to recognize and thank those who retired this year for their dedicated service and significant contributions to EpiBio. We honour Dr. Neil Klar and Diana Lee whose hard work and commitment have left a lasting impact on our community. As we bid farewell to Diana, we are saddened by her departure, but we are happy to welcome Courtney Hambides in her new role as Manager, Operations.

We also acknowledge Dr. Amardeep Thind, who stepped down as the Director of the MPH Program, for his leadership and contributions.

Notable achievements from our Faculty:

  • Dr. Nicole Redvers has been appointed to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on Embedding Ethics in Health and Climate Change Policy and was also appointed to the role of Vice President, Research at The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC)
  • Drs. Sisira Sarma, Guangyong Zou, Maria Mathews, Amardeep Thind, Kelly Anderson, Saverio Stranges are CIHR Project Grant recipients.
  • Dr. Saverio Stranges, in collaboration with other researchers, has identified three key areas where Canada’s burden of disease has increased. Their findings also show the overall health of the country’s population has stalled and is trending downward compared to other high-income countries.
  • New research led by Dr. Shehzad Ali has examined the cost-effectiveness of computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy (CCBT) in treating depression among adults in primary care settings. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, involved a diverse group of 175 patients with mild to moderate depression.
  • New research by Dr. Stranges S, Dr. Zwarenstein M, Dr. Zou GY, and colleagues has explored the effectiveness of the Hockey Fans in Training (Hockey FIT) program in promoting weight loss and improving health in men with obesity.
  • Dr. Bridget Ryan and Dr. Amanda Terry are co-leads of the Deliver Primary Healthcare Information (DELPHI) network, based at Western’s Centre for Studies in Family Medicine. DELPHI created a primary care electronic medical records-derived database to conduct research on patients’ symptoms and health conditions, as well as to conduct health services utilization studies.

Many of our Graduate and Undergraduate students received awards:

  • Marie Lan, MSc’24 received the MSc grad Governor General’s Gold Medal for Exploring economic impact of dementia prevention.
  • Alex Esemezie, MSc student, has been selected for a full-time research externship with the Statistics Canada Oral Health Component project of the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS).
  • Surim Son, PhD Candidate, has been selected as a CLSA Rising Star. This is a fantastic recognition of Surim’s hard work, dedication, and promising contributions to our field of Aging, Multi-comorbidities and Dementia.
  • Victoria Chechulina, a 3rd year BMSc student in our Honor’s Specialization module, received the Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award
  • Zachary Freeman, MSc student, and Jared Wootten, PhD Candidate, won the 2024-2025 Breast Cancer Research Traineeship. Their projects are broadly focused on the understanding, prevention, tracking and/or treatment of metastatic breast cancer, as well as precision medicine approaches for improving breast cancer outcomes.

WEBSC impact in the Department

WEBSC hosted several great events, including the Black History Month Panel Discussion, where Dr. Egide Kalisa, Dr. Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, and Dr. Saverio Stranges were panelists. They addressed the importance of spotlighting concerns specifically affecting individuals of African descent, emphasizing the significance of these issues within the broader context of global health.

In March, WEBSC presented a workshop with guest speaker Dr. Danya Carroll who covered several key research considerations when working with Indigenous communities, including traditional knowledges, strengths-based approaches, Indigenous research methods, and Indigenous data sovereignty.

In April, WEBSC hosted the Second Annual EpiBio Research Day, attracting 156 attendees. At the end of the day, the best student projects were recognized and awarded in the following categories: Best Oral Presentation, Participant’s Choice Poster Award, MPH Poster Award, Undergraduate Poster Award, MSc Poster Award, and PhD Poster Award.

In conclusion, to honor the remarkable achievements of students, faculty, and staff within the Department, WEBSC organized the annual EpiBio Gala, where Dr. Osvaldo Espin-Garcia won the 2023-2024 EpiBio Teaching Excellence Award.

In the summer, the Western University Epidemiology and Biostatistics Student Council presented the EpiBio Summer Workshop, giving attendees the opportunity to enhance their research methodology skills under the guidance of Dr. Guangyong Zou and Dr. Osvaldo Espin-Garcia.

In the fall, WEBSC hosted the Department's Fall Bake Sale, where everyone could enjoy a variety of delicious sweets.

Welcomed Guests

Dr. Fan Li, Assistant Professor at Yale School of Public Health, presented the 2024 Allan Donner Lecture “The unit of inference in cluster randomized trials”.

September Orientation events welcomed 32 new graduate students to the Department.

We had the honor of welcoming numerous distinguished scholars to our Winter and Fall seminar series.

Dr. Gerald Koh, Professor, Head, and Clinical Director in the Ministry of Health (MOH) Office for Healthcare Transformation (Singapore), visited our department and gave a talk titled “Healthier SG – Lessons So Far” during the first week of our Seminar Series.

The final seminar, the Carol Buck Lecture, held annually to honor Dr. Carol Buck whose affiliation with the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics spanned from 1952 to 2004, was presented by Dr. Shehzad Ali “Mitigating Health Inequalities: Is It Time for a New Lens?”.