Ted Bruce

Mr. Bruce is Executive Director for Population Health with the Vancouver Coastal Health authority. He is responsible for the development of Vancouver Coastal Health's (VCH) strategy for population health and to support VCH efforts to address the social determinants of health. Mr. Bruce has served on a variety of Boards including the Advisory Board to the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy, one of six national collaborating Centres established by the Public Health Agency of Canada. He has been a member of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) and has served in various capacities on the executive of the Vancouver regional group of the Institute and the National Board and National Executive of IPAC. He served on the Board of the Canadian Center for the Analysis of Regionalization and Health. Mr. Bruce has served in a variety of leadership roles with the health authority since 1997 and is currently the President of PHABC.

Julie Kerr

Julie Kerr holds BA and MS degrees in psychology. She has worked at Northern Health for 8 years, initially in mental health management, then doing a brief stint of project work in Preventive Public Health before taking the role of regional Population Health Lead in 2007. In this position, she seeks to influence Northern Health to increasingly move resources upstream, apply a population health approach to service planning, delivery and evaluation, and to work with communities to assist them in supporting their citizens to enjoy good health and a high quality of life. Julie, together with her husband and four children, is happily rooted in Prince George. She believes that health thrives within the context of supportive relationships and meaningful activity, where an individual’s gifts and abilities are shared with and valued by the community.

Dr. Marjorie MacDonald

Dr. Marjorie MacDonald is an Associate Professor the School of Nursing at the University of Victoria and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research / Public Health Agency of Canada Chair in Public Health Education and Population Intervention Research. Following completion of her undergraduate degree in nursing, she worked as a public health nurse in rural Alberta and British Columbia. She subsequently completed her Master of Science in Health Behaviour at the University of Waterloo in 1982 and received an Interdisciplinary PhD in Health Promotion (Community Health and Health Education) at the University of British Columbia in 1998. Marjorie has taught in the graduate and undergraduate nursing programs at UVIC and is currently supervising several Masters and PhD students doing projects, theses, and dissertations in the area of public health. She is engaged in three streams of research within her funded Applied Public Health Chair: 1) several studies related to exploring the implementation and impact of the BC Core Public Health Functions Framework; 2) adolescent health promotion, particularly around school health, smoking and substance use preventions, and health literacy; and 3) conceptualizing advanced practice in public health nursing. In addition, she is involved in a national study that is exploring collaboration between public health and primary care sectors in BC, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. She currently co-leads, with Dr. Trevor Hancock the Core Public Health Functions Research Initiative (http://web.uvic.ca/~cphfri/).

Dr. Irv Rootman

Irving Rootman is an Adjunct Professor in Human and Social Development and Education at the University of Victoria. From 2002-2007 he was a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Distinguished Scholar and Professor at the University of Victoria. From 1990-2001, he was the Director of the Centre for Health Promotion at the University of Toronto. From 1973-1990, he was a researcher, research manager and program manager for Health and Welfare Canada. He has been a Technical Advisor, Consultant and Senior Scientist for the World Health Organization and a former member of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Advisory Board and the Health Literacy Committee of the U.S. Institute of Medicine and Co-Chair of Canadian Expert Panel on Health Literacy. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University in 1970. His areas of expertise are: literacy and health; health promotion; school health; evaluation; and participatory research.

Shannon Turner

Shannon is the Immediate Past President of the Public Health Association of BC. In both her professional and personal life Shannon has been dedicated to the promotion of healthy communities. Shannon has worked across the health care continuum in diverse cultural settings for over twenty years providing decision support, health promotion, program management, information management, risk management, quality improvement and strategic planning consultant services. Shannon has experience at all levels of governance from local through to international program support. She holds two undergraduate degrees, a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Bachelor of Science in Health Informatics. Her Master of Science degree is in Public Health – International Health at which time she was named to the Delta Omega Society for outstanding contribution to Public Health. In her professional life she is Provincial Coordinator – Primary Health Care Prevention Support Program.

David has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from UBC and has earned his Certified General Accountants designation (CGA). Born is England but raised in Canada since the age of 12, David considers himself a Lower Mainland/ Vancouver boy. For 18 years ending in 2008, David worked in public heath care with various forms of health authorities within BC from the Richmond Hospital through to Vancouver Coastal Health all within the realm of Financial Planning. Since leaving the Health Authority in 2008, David has followed his passion for Conservation and action on Climate Change into a career at BC Hydro wherein he leads a group called “Lead by Example” which brings effective energy management and conservation throughout BC Hydro’s own staff and facilities. The predominant focus of this role is changing behaviour, culture and policy to both enable and promote conservation and energy management principles. Involvement on the PHABC Board flows from passion for health acre and for influencing policy and culture change.

Dr. Jalil Safaei is a health economist at the University of Northern British Columbia. He teaches and researches in the areas of social, political and economic determinants of population health, health inequality and healthcare policy analysis, published in the academic journals with a focus on public and population health. He is fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health based in England and a member of several other associations involved in health research and health promotion in Canada. He teaches courses in health economics and policy at graduate and undergraduate levels, and supervises graduate students who are doing their thesis mostly in the areas of disease epidemics and their socioeconomic determinants in the context of developing countries. He is involved in several health-related research networks and continues to collaborate with the Northern Health Authority on issues of health policy and data governance.