Dr. Sheilah Hogg-Johnson

Interim Scientific Director and Senior Scientist

PhD, Biostatistics, University of Toronto

Interim Scientific Director and Senior Scientist at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) Dr. Sheilah Hogg-Johnson admits she’s a numbers person. She enjoys the challenge of pulling data gathered from different organizations – such as the Ministry of Labour and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board – to help to answer important work and health questions. “I like the ‘how do you do it?’ part of research,” she says.

Dr. Hogg-Johnson leads the statistics team at IWH. This team helps other Institute researchers design, carry out and interpret their workplace health studies.

She is also conducting a research project to study an Ontario-based initiative called the High Risk Firm Initiative (HRFI). Introduced by the Ontario Ministry of Labour, the program targeted the poorest performing workplaces in Ontario with extra enforcement and consulting services. As part of this study, researchers are working with two health and safety associations (HSAs) to assess the impact of their consulting activities.

Along with this project, Dr. Hogg-Johnson is leading a team examining the increasing numbers of disability episodes of long duration that are insured by the WSIB.

“One interesting aspect of this project is that it draws on people across the WSIB from operations, health-care services, research and evaluation, labour market re-entry and finance.”

Dr. Hogg-Johnson holds degrees in mathematics and biostatistics from the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto, where she is also an assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.