Staff


MKrajden201412Mel Krajden MD, FRCPC is the Director of BC’s Public Health Laboratory and the Medical Head, Hepatitis at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. He is also a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia.

At the BCCDC Dr. Krajden helps coordinate a multi-disciplinary team to focus on understanding the key components of value-based clinical and laboratory practices that impact population health outcomes using the BC-Hepatitis C Tester’s Cohort (BC-HTC). BC-HTC contains de-identified health information for about 3.5 million British Columbians tested for HCV, HIV, HBV & TB. It includes almost all: lab tests/results, medical visits, hospitalizations, prescriptions, cancer outcomes, and mortality outcomes. With 25 years of information, the BC-HTC is able to determine net costs of services and health outcomes by different groups and adjust for confounders. The goal is to drive value-based practices from the bench to population level -- translating discovery into practice across a range of health related questions.

Dr. Krajden serves on numerous organizations and is the author of 273 peer-reviewed publications

Email: mel.krajden@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-2421


Dr. David Patrick
is the interim Executive lead for the BC Centre for Disease Control, medical epidemiology lead for antimicrobial resistance at the BCCDC and a professor in the UBC School of Population and Public Health.

Dr. Patrick is a respected public health leader, researcher and educator with expertise in epidemiology and infectious diseases. He joined the BCCDC in 1991and worked on clinical and epidemiological approaches to sexually transmitted infections and HIV throughout the 1990s and assumed leadership of the BCCDC’s epidemiology division in the 2000s. From 2011 to 2016 he was director of the UBC School of Population & Public Health, for which he was recognized for distinguished service.

He has developed his own graduate course in Control of Communicable Diseases and contributed to a wide array of other courses, including courses in medicine, dentistry and public health. He was responsible for the birth of the only tropical medicine course in western Canada.

He was awarded the Cortland Mackenzie Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the James M. Robinson Award for Contributions to Public Health.

Email: david.patrick@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-2518


Dr. Mark Gilbert
Mark Gilbert is the Medical Director of Clinical Prevention Services at BCCDC. He is also an Associate Professor in the UBC School of Population & Public Health.

Dr. Gilbert received his medical degree from the University of Ottawa in 2000, and a master's degree in health sciences and a fellowship in community medicine from UBC in 2005. He has worked as a field epidemiologist with the Public Health Agency of Canada and a medical health officer in the Vancouver Island Health Authority and has led provincial STI and HIV surveillance systems in BC and Ontario.

Currently, he is the Medical Director of Clinical Prevention Services at BCCDC, which is focused on the delivery of health promotion, harm reduction, prevention and treatment services related to TB, STI/HIV, hepatitis B and C and mental health and substance use. He also is the medical lead for Digital Public Health Services, including the Online Sexual Health Services program which delivers innovative sexual health services through the internet, including a provincial sexual health education website (smartsexresource.com) and an internet-based testing program for HIV, STI and hepatitis C (getcheckedonline.com). Dr. Gilbert is a clinical advisor to the Overdose Emergency Response Centre of the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, and also coordinates overdose response activities for the BCCDC.

Email: mark.gilbert@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-5619 Twitter: @mpjgilbert

Dr. Jane Buxton is a public health physician and professor at the University of British Columbia in the School of Population and Public Health. At the BC Centre for Disease Control she is a physician epidemiology with hepatitis and the medical lead for harm reduction.  She developed the inter-sectoral Drug Overdose and Alert Partnership (2011) and provincial Take-Home-Naloxone program (2012). She uses qualitative and quantitative approaches and includes people who use drugs in developing policy, program planning and evaluation and research.

For  her work regarding peer engagement: Click Here
For details about the take home naloxone program: Click Here
For more details her UBC profile:  Click Here
Her publications can be accessed at:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jane_Buxton

Email: Jane.Buxton@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-2573

Dr. Jason Wong currently works in the Clinical Prevention Services division at BCCDC, where he leads the team for provincial surveillance of STI/HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis. He completed his doctor of medicine (MD) training at the University of Alberta and a masters of public health (MPH) at the University of British Columbia. He currently holds a Certification in the College of Family Physicians (CCFP) and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada (FRCPC).

Email: Jason.Wong@bccdc.ca  Tel: 604-707-5615

 

hasina-samji_photoDr. Hasina Samji is an infectious disease epidemiologist with Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Master of Science degrees from the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Human Biology at Brown University.

Her research examines barriers to access to care for marginalized populations. She received a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Association for HIV Research in 2011 and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015. She has worked with a number of local and national organizations, including the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, and the BC Centre for Disease Control, where her postdoctoral research examined the relationship between socioeconomic status and syndemics using data from the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort. She joined the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in 2017 as a Assistant Professor.

Her publications can be accessed at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hasina_Samji

Email: Hasina.samji@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-2513

Amanda Y.W. Yu is Lead, Biostatistics & Data Linkage, Clinical Prevention Services, Hepatitis at BCCDC. Her responsibilities include leading the BC-HTC linkages and managing the large-scale data preparation and documentation required for the cohort data to be accessible for research and surveillance purposes. Prior to the BC-HTC, Amanda gained nine years of experience in leading linkages, performing and supporting advanced analyses, and preparing public health laboratory data for epidemiological applications. Amanda holds a BSc in Statistics from SFU (2001) followed by an MSc from the UBC School of Population and Public Health (2011). Her background includes substantial experience in SAS programming with a focus on methodological development for applications such as data imputation and clinical trials. Her current focus in working with the BC-HTC is to apply her skills to develop a platform for the analysis of population-level public health data to inform disease control and prevention policies.

Mei Chong is Biostatistician at the Public Health Analytics Division at BC Centre for Disease Control to provide center-wide statistical support and consultation.  She received her MSc degree in Statistics from Dalhousie University. Prior to joining BCCDC in 2003, Mei was statistical consultant at university, private research company, and Children’s Hospital. She has extensive experience in clinical trial, data management, administrative data, and statistical modeling. Her current focus in working with BC-HTC is to support the analytic team and to perform statistical analyses of population-level public health data to inform disease control and prevention policies.

Email: Mei.Chong@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-2525

Stanley Wong is a Biostatistician in the Hepatitis program at the UBC Centre for Disease Control (UBC CDC). His responsibilities include analyzing studies focusing on the syndemics of sexually transmitted and blood borne infections with respect to the BC-HTC project and linking health databases for further analysis. He received his Master’s degree in statistics at the University of Victoria (UVic). Before joining UBC CDC, he assumed several positions related to data linkage, management, and analysis for public health organizations.

Email: Stanley.Wong@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-5668

Maria Alvarez is an epidemiologist with Clinical Prevention Services (CPS) at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). Her responsibilities with respect to the cohort include developing and maintaining the cohort’s data access agreement, coordinating data linkages, and facilitating data access for internal and external collaborators. She is also experienced in the development of case report forms and public health guidelines, and never tires of the amazing ways data and surveillance systems can be used to improve our understanding of populations and the provision of health care services and programs. Maria holds a Bachelor in Kinesiology and MSc in Kinesiology from the University of Calgary. Her previous research experience focused on the quality of life of transtibial amputees.

Email: Maria.Alvarez@bccdc.ca Tel: 604-707-2436

 

 

 

James Wilton is an Epidemiologist working on the Opioid Prescribing Evaluation and Research Activities (OPERA) project at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). OPERA is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and led by Jane Buxton, Roy Purssell and Naveed Janjua. More specifically, the project is using the British Columbia Hepatitis Testers Cohort to characterize patterns of prescription opioid use and their association with downstream outcomes, including overdose, injection drug use and hepatitis C infection. James has an undergraduate degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Toronto.  Prior to working at the BCCDC, he worked in several BC Cancer Agency laboratories before transitioning to public health and working in HIV education, research and surveillance at CATIE (Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange) and the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.

Email: James.wilton@bccdc.ca

Dr. Mawuena Binka  is an epidemiologist with Clinical Prevention Services (CPS) at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). Mawuena is currently part of the team supporting the analytic operations of the BC-HTC enhanced surveillance platform. She has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of British Columbia. She is interested in infectious disease epidemiology, with a particular focus on HBV, HCV and HIV infection. Her previous work includes working with a team of investigators across Canada to model treatment strategies for hepatitis C elimination in Canada and investigating the dynamics of HCV transmission through shared injecting paraphernalia.

Terri Buller- Taylor has a research background in psychology, health promotion and education. Before joining the BCCDC team, she worked as a research consultant on medical education research projects including: research pertaining to medical undergraduate performance indicators; and medical school graduates’ preparedness for residency. She also consulted on health-related research projects including those related to: hepatitis C prevention; school-based health promotion; and strategies to impact determinants of health.

Terri is currently research manager of Hepatitis Education Canada, housed at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). Her work focuses on knowledge translation and the development of accessible, simple, and culturally sensitive educational materials. A key component of this is work is the involvement of providers and those affected by hepatitis C in the cooperative development of these educational materials.

Liza McGuinness has received an MA in Anthropology from the University of Victoria. Liza has managed qualitative research projects on chronic illnesses including HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, and hepatitis C. Liza currently manages multiple University of British Columbia (UBC )projects through the Hepatitis Services Division at the BC Centre for Disease Control including Hepatitis Education Canada.

Aidan Ablona is a data analyst with Clinical Prevention Services at the BC Centre for Disease Control. His work spans the fields of online sexual health, HIV, and HPV-related cancers. Under the supervision of Dr. Troy Grennan, he is working with the IDEAs cohort team to examine HPV-related cancer incidence among people living with HIV in BC. Aidan holds a Master's of Public Health from the University of British Columbia.