RESEARCH Collaborators

Andrew Howard, MD, FRCSC, MSc. Orthopaedic Surgeon, Senior Scientist, Hospital for Sick Children  Andrew Howard is a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon and injury epidemiologist at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto.  He is interested in preventing childhood injury, in particular road traffic injury.  His research focuses on real world interventions, with actual injury and activity outcomes. 

Brice Batomen PhD, Epidemiologist, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

Brice Batomen Kuimi is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. His research focuses on injury prevention and population health, with a strong emphasis on road safety and the causal evaluation of policies and infrastructure. His program leverages quasi-experimental designs and advanced causal inference methods to assess the impact of real-world strategies including traffic-calming measures, automated speed enforcement, and cycling infrastructure on crashes and injuries among vulnerable road users. He also employs innovative data methodologies, including computer vision, to spatially and temporally map street-level determinants of road safety and active transportation.

Alison Macpherson,  PhD, Epidemiologist, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University Alison Macpherson is a Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University and an adjunct senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Her research is related to keeping kids active, healthy, and safe, and focuses on the prevention of childhood injuries primarily through policies and laws designed to reduce injuries. 

Anne Harris, PhD, Epidemiologist, School of Occupational and Public Health, Toronto Metropolitan University Anne Harris is an epidemiologist interested in chronic diseases and injuries. She studies exposures relevant to work, cities, transportation, and environments, using a variety of large administrative linkage databases to study health at the population level. She is a co-PI on the CapaCITY/É study and collaborates on studies of road injuries with the PROACT team. 

Marie Soleil Cloutier, PhD, Geographer, Insitut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS)          Marie Soleil Cloutier is a Professor at l’Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique and director of the Centre Urbanisation Culture Société. Her expertise in health geography and urban studies supports her research interests on walkability in urban areas, including risks faced by the most vulnerable pedestrians (children, older adults), and road safety in general. She leads the Pedestrian and Urban Space Laboratory (LAPS) and co-leads the Pedestrian Smart City Laboratory (VIP, funded by the CFI-Leaders fund). Her research is supported by Canadian (CIHR, SSHRC) and Quebec (FRQSC, actions concertées) funding agencies and she collaborates with various actors in the public and private sector as well as with researchers in Quebec, Canada, and France. 

Brent Hagel,  PhD, Epidemiologist, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary Brent Hagel is a Professor in the Departments of Paediatrics and Community Health Sciences in the Cumming School of Medicine and Adjunct Professor in Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. He is Director of the Healthy Children, Families and Communities Program of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and a member of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health. His key research interest area is child and adolescent injury prevention currently focused on the determinants of child and youth bicycle, pedestrian, ski-snowboard and ice hockey injuries. 

Meghan Winters, PhD,  Epidemiologist, Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University Meghan Winters (pronouns: she/her) is a CIHR/PHAC Applied Public Health Chair (Gender and Sex in Healthy Cities) and a Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She leads the Cities, Health, and Active Transportation Research Lab, where with a wonderful team of trainees and staff she leads a responsive research program looking at how city policies, plans, and infrastructure can support healthy and safe transportation, with equity front of mind. She is happiest when working in close collaboration with partners to conduct research and create tools that address real-world challenges. 

Shelina Babul, PhD,  BC Injury Research and Prevention, Unit, University of British Columbia, BC Children's Hospital  Shelina is the Director of the BCIRPU. She focuses primarily on sport and recreational evidence-based research and knowledge implementation, with a particular specialization in concussion/traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and their prevention, recognition, treatment and management. In 2013, Shelina created the Concussion Awareness Training Tool (CATT), a series of online educational modules and resources addressing concussion recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and management. She is the Director of BC Children’s Hospital Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (BC CHIRPP), a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, the University of British Columbia (UBC); and an Investigator with both BC Children’s Hospital and the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, UBC. Shelina is the chair and/or committee board member on numerous provincial and national injury and concussion advisory committees. In 2019, Shelina was nominated for a YWCA Women of Distinction Award. She is the recipient of the Brain Injury Association of Canada Prevention and Awareness Award (2014), BC Hockey Service Recognition Award (2019/2020), and the UBC Faculty of Medicine Clinical Faculty Award for Excellence in Research (Clinical or Applied) (2023).

Ben Beck, PhD, Professor, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia  Ben Beck is Head of Healthy Active Cities in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. Ben works at the intersection of transport, public health and climate change. He is an internationally renowned leader in active and sustainable transport research. He established and leads an interdisciplinary program of research that brings together experts in public health, urban and transport planning, engineering, complex systems science, behaviour change and road safety to design healthier, safer, more equitable and sustainable cities. Spanning every part of the system that shapes urban health, from individual experience to the environments and policies that shape entire cities, his program is underpinned by developing world-leading data systems, cutting-edge methods and data-driven solutions, and partnering with government, industry, not-for-profit organisations and the community to untap the potential of active and sustainable mobility to transform population and planetary health.As an engineer working in a school of public hHealth, Ben prides himself on his ability to bring together international leaders across a breadth of fields and disciplines to solve complex local and global problems in partnership with government and non-government organisations. His work has directly informed transport and safety policy in Australia and internationally. Ben is driven by a passion to create safe, healthy, equitable and sustainable environments for all.

Lauren Pearson, PhD,  Research Fellow, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Lauren Pearson is an early-career researcher in Healthy Active Cities in the School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University. Lauren leads a program of research in equitable active transport, working at the intersection of behavioural science, transport, and gender equity. Her research develops new methods for co-designing behavioural interventions that help more women, and other groups underrepresented in walking and bike riding, access the health, social, economic and environmental benefits of active transport. 

Liraz Fridman, PhD, Road Safety Supervisor, City of Guelph Liraz Fridman is the Road Safety Supervisor for the City of Guelph. After graduating from her PhD program at York University she completed two postdoctoral fellowships jointly at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Calgary in the areas of injury prevention and speed management. Her passion for equity, injury prevention, and road safety led her to a role in municipal government where she implements Guelph’s Vision Zero Action Plan.  

Jessica Omand, PhD, Dietician Toronto Metropolitan University Jessica Omand is an Assistant Professor with the School of Nutrition, paediatric researcher, and member of the College of Dietitians of Ontario. Jessica holds an MSc and PhD from the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and completed three years of a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Child Health Evaluative Sciences at the Hospital for Sick Children. Her research is focused on primary prevention of childhood diseases in Canada through nutritional interventions focused on early life. During her PhD, Jessica led the inaugural linkage of the TARGet Kids! database, the largest primary care practice based research network for children in Canada, with health administrative data at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Using these linked datasets, she examined whether vitamin D was associated with health service utilization for respiratory diseases. Jessica is currently involved in many collaborative projects focused on nutrition in early life, both dietary intake and eating behaviours, and various school outcomes (children’s readiness to start school, parent-reported performance in school, and academic achievement). During her training she has received funding support from CIHR (MSc and doctoral awards) as well as local and national Clinician Scientist Training funding.  

Pamela Fuselli, MSc, President and CEO, Parachute Pamela Fuselli is the President & CEO at Parachute, Canada’s national charity dedicated to injury prevention. With more than 20 years of experience in the health care and injury prevention sector, Pamela has focused on knowledge mobilization resulting in behaviour change, the impact of good public policy and the importance of collaboration to further the impact on social change. Pamela has written numerous national publications and is a principal or co-principal investigator, and knowledge translation expert, for national and international research grants. As well, she is a speaker and a media spokesperson on a wide range of injury prevention topics and public policy issues. Pamela received her BSc in Psychology from the University of Toronto, her BHA from Ryerson University and an MSc in Creativity and Change Leadership from the State University of New York College at Buffalo. 

Sarah Richmond, PhD, Public Health Ontario. Sarah Richmond is the Injury Prevention Lead in Health Promotion, at Public Health Ontario (PHO). She is also an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. As an Injury Epidemiologist and Certified Exercise Physiologist, Sarah has doctoral and post-doctoral training in injury prevention, with specialized expertise in injury epidemiology, implementation science, and knowledge translation. Her extensive background shapes her work, driving advancements in injury prevention research and its practical applications.