The Institute offers adjunct scientist appointments to collaborating researchers who make sustained contributions to IWH research projects or programs.
Dr. Carlo Ammendolia
is a clinical epidemiologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. In 2012, he was appointed to the first "professorship in spine" at the University of Toronto, a new position funded by the Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation. Dr. Ammendolia is also a staff clinician in the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. His research interests include designing and implementing workplace health promotion and return-to-work programs, developing and testing non-operative treatments for spinal stenosis and herniated discs, and conducting systematic reviews on interventions for back pain.
Dr. Peri Ballantyne
is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. A health sociologist, she has ongoing affiliations with the Institute for Work and Health, the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto and the Department of Sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton. She currently teaches sociology research methods, the sociology of health and illness, and the sociology of medicine. Her current research is focused on the lay experience of illness (with a particular interest in pharmaceutical use) and the sociology of work and health.
Dr. Philip Bigelow
is an associate professor in the Department of Health Studies and Gerontology at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, and has an appointment in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Bigelow teaches courses in occupational health, risk assessment and epidemiology, and is a faculty member in the Collaborative PhD Program in Work and Health. He has extensive field experience in occupational health and safety. His research is in the area of risk assessment and on the effectiveness of interventions to prevent occupational injuries and disease.
Dr. Claire Bombardier
is a professor of medicine and director of the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Toronto. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Transfer for Musculoskeletal Care, as well as a Pfizer Research Chair in Rheumatology. She's a rheumatologist at Mount Sinai Hospital and a senior scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute. From 1995-2013, she was a co-editor at the Cochrane Back Review Group housed at the Institute for Work & Health, where she now serves on the editorial board as a founding editor emeritus. Professional interests include the improvement of clinical effectiveness, optimum use of technology and drugs, clinical economics, performance measurement/program evaluation, health research methods (clinical trials), knowledge transfer and workplace/rehabilitation, with a focus on musculoskeletal disorders.
Dr. Cécile Boot
is a senior scientist in the Department of Public and Occupational Health / EMGO+ Institute for Health and Care Research at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her research interests include work and health, in particular maintaining working with chronic conditions. She is involved in collaborative projects in Canada (IWH), the United States (Liberty Mutual & Harvard School of Public Health) and Denmark (National Research Centre for the Working Environment).
Dr. Sandra Brouwer
is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences, Community & Occupational Medicine at the University Medical Center in Groningen (UMCG), the Netherlands. Her current research work focuses on work (dis)ability assessments and return-to-work outcomes among disabled workers, and on sustainable labour market participation of older workers and young adults with disabilities, as well as people with long-term illnesses.
Dr. Andrea Chambers
is an evaluation specialist in Infection Prevention and Control with Public Health Ontario, based in Toronto. She is also a credentialed evaluator with the Canadian Evaluation Society. Her professional interests include developing methods and approaches to support evidence-informed decision-making in public health, implementation science, and the evaluation of complex interventions. Her more recent work has focused on infection prevention and control aspects of occupational health, including needlestick injury prevention and health-care worker influenza immunization.
Dr. Donald Cole
is a professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is also a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in occupational medicine, public health and preventive medicine. He has skills in occupational and environmental epidemiology, complex intervention evaluation, and research capacity development, with an interest in agricultural work, food systems and human health. He teaches, mentors and contributes mixed-methods research evidence to practice, programs and policy.
Dr. Paul Demers
is the director of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre in Toronto, based at Cancer Care Ontario. He is also the scientific director of CAREX Canada, a national workplace and environmental carcinogen surveillance program, as well as a professor with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and a clinical professor with the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. He is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on occupational cancer and other chronic diseases.
Dr. Carolyn Dewa
currently heads the Work and Well-being Research and Evaluation Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), where she is a senior scientist in the Health Systems Research and Consulting Unit in the Social and Epidemiological Research Department. She currently holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Public Health Agency of Canada Applied Public Health Chair to develop effective interventions for mental illness and mental health in the working population. Her research focuses on three major themes: workplace disability associated with mental illness, access and use of pharmacotherapeutics, and the provision of mental health services and support to individuals with severe mental illness.
Dr. Renée-Louise Franche
is a clinical psychologist and consultant in work disability prevention and occupational health. She is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on developing a better understanding of how organizational, health-care and individual factors contribute to safe, sustainable and healthy return to work following injury or ill health.
Dr. Jill Hayden
is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health & Epidemiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her research experience and expertise includes systematic review and meta-analysis methods, prognostic research and musculoskeletal health—specifically low-back pain.
Dr. Gail Hepburn
is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta. Hepburn specializes in organizational psychology. Her research interests include the impact of workplace factors—such as perceptions of justice or fairness, safety climate, workplace aggression and work-family balance—on employee well-being.
Dr. Vicki Kristman
is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and an assistant professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She currently holds a CIHR New Investigator Award in community-based primary health care, focusing on preventing work disability through accommodation, and is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation. Her research interests include understanding the influence of workplace factors on work disability, specifically the influence of supervisors and workplace accommodation, with a focus mainly on musculoskeletal and brain injuries.
Dr. Linn Holness
is a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, chief of the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at St Michael’s Hospital, and director of the Centre for Research Expertise in Occupational Disease. She is an occupational health physician whose research interests include occupational health services and occupational disease, particularly work-related skin and lung diseases.
Dr. Mieke Koehoorn
is a professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests focus on the surveillance and epidemiology of work-related injury and illness (e.g. serious injuries, asthma, mesothelioma) and the evaluation of workers' compensation policies and programs (e.g. effect of certification on injury risk of tree-fallers, effect of surgical settings and wait times on return-to-work outcomes). Many of her projects are part of her work as the co-lead of the Partnership for Work, Health & Safety, a research partnership with WorkSafeBC to maximize the use of administrative data for policy-relevant research questions. Mieke is the recent recipient of a CIHR Chair in Gender, Work and Health.
Dr. Marie Laberge
is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montreal and a scientist at the Sainte Justine University Hospital Research Centre (which specializes in mother, child and adolescent health). She is also a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Biology, Health, Society and Environment (CINBIOSE) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization. Her primary disciplinary fields are ergonomics and occupational therapy, and her current research activities concern adolescent occupational injuries and disability prevention.
Dr. Tony LaMontagne
leads, and is a professor in, the Work, Health & Wellbeing Unit in the Population Health Strategic Research Centre at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. His broad research interest is in developing the scientific and public understanding of work as a social determinant of health, and translating this research into policy and practice to improve workplace and worker health. Currently, his primary focus is on work and mental health—combining a range of etiologic and intervention research projects.
Dr. Ellen MacEachen
is an associate professor in the School of Public Health in the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, as well as co-director of the Centre for Research on Work Disability Policy housed at the Institute for Work & Health. She is a mentor and program executive committee member with the CIHR Strategic Training Program in Work Disability Prevention, an academic fellow with the Centre for Critical Qualitative Enquiry at the University of Toronto, and an academic council member with the Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences. Her research interests focus on systemic, social and organizational determinants of work injury, disability and labour market integration, and on how qualitative methods can inform policy and practice in occupational health.
Greg McIntosh
is an epidemiologist and director of clinical research at CBI Health Group in Toronto, where he designed and implemented a company-wide clinical data collection system and clinical database. He has been active in using that data to further the understanding and treatment of low-back pain. In 2000, he joined the journal Spine as a scientific referee and is now on its advisory board performing peer reviews.
Dr. W. Patrick Neumann
runs the Human Factors Engineering Lab in Ryerson University’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in Toronto. A certified ergonomist, Dr. Neumann was once based at the former Swedish National Institute for Working Life in Gothenburg. His work emphasizes both the technical and organizational aspects of operation design, and his research looks at the application of human factors science to achieve design solutions with competitive advantages that are sustainable in both technical and human terms.
Dr. Mark Pagell
holds a Chair in Global Leadership and is a professor of sustainable supply chain management at University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland. Prior to joining UCD, he was a professor of operations management and information systems at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. His research focuses on sustainable supply chain management, human resources issues such as employee safety in operational environments, and operational responses to environmental uncertainty.
Dr. Glenn Pransky
is director of the Center for Disability Research at the Liberty Mutual Research Center for Safety and Health in Hopkinton, Massachusetts (USA). He is also an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and is a visiting lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Massachusetts/Lowell. His research interests include disability and outcome measurement, particularly for work-related musculoskeletal disorders.
Dr. Stéphanie Premji
is an assistant professor in Labour Studies and Health, Aging & Society at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Her research interests include the occupational health of racialized workers within industrialized countries and social inequalities in work-related health. Whenever possible or advisable, she conducts mixed-methods, interdisciplinary research in collaboration with unions and community organizations, and her research usually incorporates a gender-based perspective. She has written the guidance for incorporating gender in healthy workplace initiatives for the World Health Organization.
Dr. Sergio Rueda
is director of the Health Research Initiatives at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, as well as an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He is leading a population health research program that situates labour force participation, working conditions and income security as fundamental determinants of health in HIV/AIDS. He also conducts policy-relevant research on the impact of psychosocial stressors on the mental health of people living with HIV.
Dr. Jeanne Sears
is a research associate professor with the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington. Her research interests include occupational injury surveillance, occupational health services, policy and program evaluation, and disparities in health and access to health care. She is a member of the National Center for Health Statistics Injury Severity Advisory Group at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. She has evaluated role expansion for nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the workers' compensation system, and policy changes to the vocational rehabilitation system for injured workers.
Dr. Harry Shannon
is a professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He also has an appointment in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. His research interests include workplace health and safety, and he is a co-investigator on the IWH project on breakthrough change. He chairs the Methodology Working Group for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, and has written on health and safety implications of the aging workforce. He is also involved in several global health projects, including a simulation study of sampling in difficult settings and another study on evaluating humanitarian aid.
Dr. William Shaw
is a principal research scientist at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety in Hopkinton, Massachusetts (USA) and holds an appointment with the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His training background is in engineering and clinical psychology, and his research is focused on issues of workplace disability and return to work, especially with regard to psychosocial factors and organizational support for workers with musculoskeletal conditions and chronic illnesses. He is involved in a number of collaborative projects in Australia, Canada, Sweden, and The Netherlands.
Dr. Ivan Steenstra
is a research facilitator in the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. He obtained a masters degree in human movement sciences in work and health from the University of Groningen and a masters degree in epidemiology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He completed his PhD at the Institute for Extramural Research (EMGO) in the Department of Public and Occupational Health at the VU Medical Center. Steenstra was the recipient of IWH’s Mustard Fellowship in Work Environment and Health from 2006-2008. His research interests focus on the epidemiology of return to work in musculoskeletal pain (with an emphasis on older workers), on determining prognosis following low-back pain, and on tailoring interventions to achieve a fast and safe return to work.
Dr. Mary Stergiou-Kita
is an assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto, as well as an adjunct scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, part of the University Health Network. Her research focuses on developing tools to enhance work performance and participation across worker injury, illness and disability groups.
Dr. Zahi Touma
is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Toronto and a staff physician and clinician scientist in the Division of Rheumatology at Toronto Western Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital. His research interests include outcome measurement, cognitive function assessment and quality of life, especially in patients diagnosed with lupus. He is involved in collaborative research with IWH related to the review of critical appraisal tools of studies on measurement properties.
Dr. Richard Wells
is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. He is also director of the Centre of Research Expertise for the Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders (CRE-MSD), a multi-university centre hosted at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the upper limb and back.
