Dr. Salima Meherali is an Associate Professor in the Faculty
of Nursing, University of Alberta. Her research interests are in migration and
global maternal, child, and adolescent health. As a principal investigator, she
has been involved in community-based participatory action research projects
that actively engage with women and adolescents to enhance their healthcare
decision-making and improve health and well-being. Dr. Salima Meherali has a
special interest in research synthesis, scaling up evidence-based interventions
in community settings, and knowledge translation research.
Simone Lebeuf is an Adolescent
Medicine Pediatrician at the Stollery Children’s Hospital and an Assistant
Clinical Professor at the University of Alberta. She completed her
undergraduate medical training and pediatric residency at the University of
Calgary, and her subspecialty training in Adolescent Medicine at the University
of Toronto. She has established an academic Adolescent Medicine presence at
Stollery Children’s Hospital. Her clinical areas of interest include transition
to adult care, sexual health, adolescent-led families, and transgender and
gender-nonconforming youth. Her academic interests focus on pregnant and
parenting youth and clinician health and wellbeing.
Sarah Munro is an Assistant Professor in
the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the University of
Washington School of Public Health and a Scientist with the Centre for
Advancing Health Outcomes, and Co-Director of the Contraception and Abortion
Research Team. Before joining UW in 2024, she was Michael Smith Health Research
BC Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics &
Gynaecology at the University of British Columbia. She completed her BA (Hon)
and MA in the UBC Department of English, focusing on public health
communication. She then pursued a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at UBC
(2012-2016) focused on knowledge translation (KT). She completed a joint
Postdoctoral Fellowship (2016-2019) in implementation science with the UBC
Department of Family Practice and Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and
Clinical Practice. Her fellowships investigated the factors influencing the
implementation of family planning innovations in primary care. In 2019 she
began her faculty position at UBC. Using qualitative and knowledge translation
methods, she investigates the factors that influence the implementation of
evidence-based innovations in health services and systems, with a focus on
improving equity and access to sexual and reproductive health care for
underserved populations. Her areas of research expertise include contraception,
abortion, shared decision-making, knowledge translation, and implementation
science.
Ashley Vandermorris is a Staff Paediatrician in the Division
of Adolescent Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and a
member of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health. She completed her
undergraduate degree at Yale University, her medical degree at Harvard Medical
School, a residency in pediatrics and fellowships in Adolescent Medicine and
Global Child Health at SickKids, and an MSc in Health Policy, Management, and
Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She is also an Assistant Professor of
the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. As an Adolescent
Medicine physician, she is committed to championing the ideals of
accessibility, advocacy, equity, justice, and collaboration as the fundamental
tenets that will enable improved health outcomes for youth. Clinically, she
works in the Transgender Youth Clinic and the Young Families Programs within
the Division of Adolescent Medicine, where her clinical focus is on supporting
youth navigating the intersections of structural and social determinants of
health to achieve healthy developmental trajectories.
Hasina Samji is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of
Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a Senior Scientist at the
British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. She received her doctorate in
infectious disease epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health, where she also completed her MSc. Subsequently, she completed a
postdoctoral fellowship, awarded by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health
Research, at the BC Centre for Disease Control. She joined the Faculty of Health
Sciences at SFU as an Assistant Professor in 2017. She has expertise in the
design and implementation of observational cohort studies and the analysis of
administrative health data. She studies healthcare access for underserved
populations, including those with HIV, who use drugs, and children and youth.
She is a Research Associate at the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health
and Addictions (CARMHA) and has spearheaded research to estimate the prevalence
of mental disorders in BC to inform health services planning for the BC
Ministry of Health. She is the Principal Investigator for the Youth Development
Instrument (YDI). She received a New Investigator Award from the Canadian
Association for HIV Research in 2011, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health
Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015, and a Mowafaghian Child Health Award
from the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2020.
Wendy V. Norman is a Professor in the Department of Family
Practice, and an associate member in both the School of Population and Public
Health, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, of the Faculty of
Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Her research interests include family planning health
services, health professional education, and population health. She brings this
multidisciplinary expertise into her role as the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Family Planning Innovation (2024-2032) and formerly as the Public Health Agency of Canada Chair fo research on family planning health equity
interventions (2014-2024). She was awarded the prestigious Darroch Award in
sexual and reproductive health research in 2015 by the New York-based
Guttmacher Institute. The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada
awarded her their inaugural National Mentorship Award in 2020, and the Canadian
Government recognized her in 2021 as a “Woman of Impact”.