CDPE - Key Persons
Anaita Kharwanwala is an Administrative Assistant at the CDPE. Her responsibilities mainly involve supporting the Executive Director and the administrative function of the Centre. She supports the team in their various projects, including the implementation of Toronto's Drug Checking Service, tracking knowledge translation activities, managing the Centre's website and social media presence, and other communications activities. Anaita graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa and completed her Post-Graduate Certificate in Human Resources Management from Humber College.
Bijan Rafat is a Research Coordinator at the CDPE. He is responsible for coordinating the activities related to two studies: PRIMER - a multi-national study that aims to identify whether specific interventions and factors influence the risk that individuals begin injecting drugs and national SOS - a study that evaluates the safer opioid supply pilot programs that have been implemented across Canada. Bijan has been involved in research related to opioid use and in cannabis research including a study that focused on the evaluation of the role of cannabis in reducing opioid use in chronic pain patients. His experience includes designing and coordinating randomized-controlled trials and observational studies. He holds a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Toronto.
Dr. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, PhD, is a criminologist and sociologist who studies race, inequality and social policy. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto and a Senior Fellow at Massey College. He holds Affiliate Scientist status at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and serves as Director of Research for the Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty. Dr. Owusu-Bempah began his academic career in the United States at Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to becoming a professor, he held positions with Canada's National Judicial Institute, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General. He is frequently sought out to provide commentary and advice to public and private sector agencies, community organizations, and media outlets on a variety of topics. Dr. Owusu-Bempah currently serves as an advisor to Red Light Holland.
Dr. Ayden Scheim is an Affiliate Scientist with CDPE and Co-PI of the Ontario Integrated Supervised Injection Services cohort study in Toronto (OiSIS-Toronto). Previously, as a postdoctoral researcher with CDPE, he led a program of systematic reviews on drug policy and harm reduction interventions. Dr. Scheim is currently an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health in Philadelphia and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics (2017) from Western University and was a Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Diego.
Dan Werb, PhD, is an epidemiologist and policy analyst with expertise in HIV, addictions, and drug policy. Dr. Werb is a Research Scientist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, and holds a dual appointment as Assistant Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases & Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He is also Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Division of AIDS at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Werb is an inaugural winner of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse Avenir Award (2015) for creative new investigators proposing highly innovative research at the intersection of HIV and substance use. This award supports his work as Principal Investigator of PRIMER: Preventing Injecting by Modifying Existing Responses, a five-year multi-site cohort study tasked with developing interventions to preventing entry into injection drug use.
Dr. Werb is the recipient of a Trailblazer Award (2017) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He conducts extensive knowledge translation on drug policy and public health, through print and radio journalism, and is the winner of a 2014 Canadian National Magazine Award for his popular science writing. Finally, he was profiled in April 2017 as one of 13 young Canadians making a difference as part of the CBC series ‘We Are Canada' (http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/925251139650). His general interest non-fiction book about Tijuana's femicide, City of Omens, will be published in 2019 (Bloomsbury Publishing).
Dr. Gillian Kolla is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the CDPE. She uses community-based qualitative and ethnographic research to examine how to make health and social services more accessible to people who use drugs. Dr. Kolla's doctoral research at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, explored how the criminalization of drug use impedes the ability of public health programs to respond effectively to drug use. She is currently also conducting postdoctoral research at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, and is a member of the coordinating committee for the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, which opened and ran Ontario's first supervised injection site in Moss Park as a volunteer initiative in 2017-2018 as part of a community-led response to overdose deaths.
Mohammad Karamouzian is an infectious disease epidemiologist. A former veterinarian (DVM) turned public health researcher, he holds a PhD in Population and Public Health (2021) from the University of British Columbia where he had the Vanier and Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation doctoral scholarships. Before joining CDPE, he was a Banting postdoctoral fellow at Brown School of Public Health. He is also affiliated with the BC Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) and the WHO Collaborating Centre for HIV Surveillance (HIVHUB) in the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Karamouzian's research focuses on addressing health inequities faced by marginalized populations, such as female sex workers, people who inject drugs, and people who are incarcerated. He is committed to translating his research into policies that will improve the health of marginalized populations. He has authored/co-authored 120+ peer-reviewed publications in leading international peer-reviewed journals and won 20+ awards and scholarships for his research, leadership, and academic achievements.
Frishta Nafeh supports the National Safer Supply Evaluation. Previously, Frishta worked with the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM) Ontario branch where she helped implement several projects focused on the influence of COVID-19 on people who use drugs. Frishta holds a Master of Public Health from Queen's University.
Hae Seung Sung is a Research Assistant at CDPE with a background in geography and geospatial analysis. Before joining CDPE, she served as a Data Scientist at the Atlanta Regional Commission, a governmental agency overseeing regional planning in Metro Atlanta, where her expertise in geospatial data influenced regional planning, regional data literacy, and development strategies. Hae Seung holds a Master of Science in Geography from Georgia State University, Atlanta, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Seoul National University, Seoul, further enriching her multidisciplinary perspective in her current research endeavours.
Hannah is a part-time researcher at CDPE, working on the cohort study. Hannah Ali is a PhD student in Socio-cultural Anthropology at Cornell. Hannah's work draws on the anthropology of addiction, harm reduction, public health, ethics, youth studies, care, and Somali Studies. Hannah's previous ethnography followed Somali-Canadian families' embodiment of indigenous philosophies and laws in Toronto, Canada.
Her current work follows Toronto's fentanyl epidemic based on the experiences of Somali youth. She was interested in how these youths navigate addiction, homelessness, and their experiences with community resources. Hannah's work derives from her experiences with community shelter work, program supervision, and collaborative community research. Hannah is a Second-Generation Somali-Canadian born and raised in Burnaby, British Columbia. At large, hannah is interested in how public health discourse can learn from and incorporate how marginalized communities develop creative solutions to the health and socioeconomic barriers they face.
Heather McLean is a Research Assistant at the CDPE, responsible for community outreach and conducting interviews with a longitudinal cohort of people who use drugs in Toronto. Heather has experience in early phase clinical research with INC Research and Syneos Health, where she specialized in first in human substance use studies as the screening unit administrator and first point of contact for participants. Before Syneos closed their Toronto clinic, Heather was training in their screening results department. She also has extensive experience in telephone research where she most recently was a team leader, which involved training a group of 65 interviewers and editing the collected data to be inputted into the transportation database. Heather graduated from Central Technical School.
Indhu Rammohan is a Research Assistant at the CDPE, where she assists the team in interpreting study-related data. Indhu developed an interest in harm reduction and drug policy during her undergraduate training in global health. She co-founded the University of Toronto Chapter of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research, which aims to promote health equity by facilitating knowledge translation and collaboration between students and researchers in global health. She was also involved in the University of Toronto International Health Program where she played a key role in organizing U of T World AIDS Day 2015 and wrote for the UTIHP Editorial. Indhu is currently pursuing a MSc in Health Services Research, in the Health Policy concentration, at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
Kate Roberts is a Visiting Scholar with CDPE. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Bryn Mawr College of Social Work and Social Research, her dissertation utilizes qualitative methods to understand socio-political factors that impact drug use and drug use assistance among women and gender minorities. Kate is also an affiliated researcher with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and works on projects related to knowledge of severe infections, such as endocarditis and osteomyelitis, among persons who use and inject drugs. Kate received her M.S.W. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She received her M.S.W. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has 7 years of experience as a clinical social worker. Kate also holds an M.A. from Duke University, studying the history of race, gender, and medical ethics in American religious contexts.
Job Titles:
- Operations Manager
- Research Program Manager
Layla Jabbour is the Operations Manager at the CDPE. She is a central resource for CDPE programs, projects, and staff. Layla provides strategic leadership to develop, improve, and sustain the operational effectiveness and efficiency of the CDPE. She is accountable for the financial portfolio and programmatic reporting of the organization, as well as representing CDPE at MAP, Research Administration and Hospital meetings related to research operations. Layla brings over diverse experience in research, policy and frontline service delivery with diverse communities and stakeholders. She approaches her work with a passion for justice, anti-racism and harm reduction practices. Layla holds a Master of Social Work from York University and a bachelor in Community Planning from the University of Waterloo.
Liz McLean is a Research Assistant at the CDPE, responsible for community outreach and conducting interviews with people who use drugs for the Integrated Supervised Injection Services Evaluation. Liz has lived experience and is deeply embedded in Toronto's harm reduction community. She has extensive experience providing services to people who use drugs and undertaking community-based research through Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre and the University of Toronto.
Lucas Martignetti is a Research Coordinator at the CDPE, where he supports the evaluation of safer opioid supply pilot programs across Canada. He has experience working with people who use drugs as a Harm Reduction Outreach Worker, providing safer drug use and overdose prevention supplies and education. He has research experience related to overdose prevention, and health inequity experienced by people who use drugs, who are experiencing homelessness and poverty, and who are newcomers to Canada. He holds a Masters of Health Science in Community, Public and Population Health from Ontario Tech University, where he is currently pursuing a PhD in the same field.
Mia is an interviewer (Research Assistant II) at CDPE working on community outreach and conducting interviews with a longitudinal cohort of people who use drugs in Toronto (TDOT). Her experience comes from being a frontline harm reduction worker in downtown Toronto. She is a PhD candidate in the Social Policy stream in Policy Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. She specializes in community-based participatory research methods and critical policy studies methodology and has been involved in community-based research projects in many different ways as a research assistant and project coordinator. Mia has a diploma in social work and an MA in Immigration Studies where she did research in the areas of immigration and policing, specifically on undocumented migrants, sanctuary city policy and police jurisdiction. Her current research is focused on education policy, anti-racism strategies and harm reduction. Mia deeply believes in the core values of harm reduction and enjoys bike riding and spending time with her three kids.
Job Titles:
- Manager of the Policy Impact Unit
- Manager, Policy Impact Unit
Nazlee Maghsoudi is the Manager of the Policy Impact Unit at the CDPE, having formerly acted as Knowledge Translation Manager. She has been deeply involved in the development of evidence-based drug policies at the grassroots, local, national, and international levels since 2013. Nazlee is Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the New York NGO Committee on Drugs, a global committee that supports civil society engagement on drug policy at the United Nations and represents 100+ organizations. She is also a Strategic Advisor at Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, having formerly acted as Chair of the Board of Directors. Nazlee is a PhD candidate in Health Services Research at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen's University and a Master of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto.
Nick is a research assistant at CDPE working on quantitative analysis for the TDOT cohort study. He is a PhD student in Health Services Research (Outcomes and Evaluation emphasis) at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto working under the primary supervision of Professor Therese Stukel. Currently, his thesis aims to explore polypharmacy in older populations using electronic health records and other real-world healthcare data sources, with a particular focus on the development and application of statistical and pharmacoepidemiologic methods. Prior to starting his PhD, he completed an MSc in Medical Statistics (Biostatistics) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an undergraduate degree in Applied Statistics at the University of Toronto. More information about Nick's research, education, and past work experience can be found here: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3171-7541
Rohan Mohindra (he/him) is a research assistant at CDPE. He holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Western Ontario and has over 7 years of research and frontline experience advancing health equity and promoting health and well-being for priority populations in India and Canada. His work is rooted in an Anti-racist and anti-oppressive framework and he is committed to addressing and overcoming systemic inequities that prevent People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) to live a healthy and meaningful life.
Sanjana is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the CDPE focusing on the centre's T-DOT cohort. She possesses abundant experience managing the data-to-day operations of research studies and has successfully supported the acquisition of numerous grants to conduct community-based research in the areas of HIV, harm reduction, and substance use. Sanjana is a skilled quantitative and qualitative researcher, with experience in protocol and research instrument development, data collection, analyses, and knowledge translation. Her work is guided by anti-oppression, anti-racist, and equity-based approaches and informed by her interdisciplinary background. She holds an MPH from the University of Toronto and is currently completing her doctoral training at the University of British Columbia where she aims to advance evidence-based efforts to support the health and wellbeing of communities facing longstanding marginalization.
Seneka Krishnakumar is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Public Health at Lakehead University. She is dedicated to pursuing her academic and professional interests in the field of public health, with a focus on making a positive impact on community health outcomes. As a Masters student, Seneka is actively engaged in studying various aspects of public health, including epidemiology, health policy, and health promotion. Throughout her academic journey, Seneka was involved in a range of research projects, that involved marginalized communities. In her recent work, Seneka focused on studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marginalized and vulnerable populations. Seneka's work not only focuses on uncovering the negative impacts but also aims to highlight the resilience, strengths, and innovative solutions that marginalized individuals and communities develop to navigate the challenges posed by the pandemic. Seneka is dedicated to shedding light on these disparities and identifying strategies to address them effectively.
Tanisha Palmer is a Research Assistant at the CDPE, providing administrative and outreach support to the T-DOT cohort studies. Tanisha has front-line experience working with people who use drugs (PWUD) across different service sectors such as community health, housing and overdose prevention sites. Tanisha's passion lies in harm reduction education, particularly geared towards youth and knowledge translation aiming to improve existing services that support people who use drugs, particularly those who are under and unhoused. She is passionate about community engagement, with a health equity lens to address the gaps in healthcare delivery for our most vulnerable community members. Tanisha holds a Master of Arts in Social Justice and Community Engagement and works as a case manager for harm reduction programming.
Valeria is a research assistant at CDPE working on quantitative analysis for the TDOT cohort study. Pursuing a PhD in Data Science, she has five years of experience as a consultant biostatistician for Spanish hospitals. Valeria's expertise lies in applying various statistical methods to complex health science challenges. She is an enthusiast of public health and epidemiology and has a profound interest in utilizing data to drive positive change.
Job Titles:
- Government and Intergovernmental Organizations
Yingbo is a Data Scientist at CDPE. With a skill set covering administrative and clinical data acquisition, evaluation, and analysis, he supports and assists researchers and policy-makers to uncover meaningful trends and patterns within complex datasets. While working on pre-dialysis policy project at Ontario Renal Network, he transformed raw information into actionable insights that facilitated the well-informed decisions. Having collaborated extensively at Canadian Institute for Health Information, Ontario Health, and IC/ES, Yingbo understands the unique challenges and opportunities presented by healthcare and clinical data. He holds a Master of Science in Statistics from Baruch College, New York.
Zachary Bouck is a Research Associate at the CDPE, where he assists with study design, data analysis and interpretation of findings. Zach has prior experience working as a biostatistician at Women's College Hospital, where the majority of his research involved the use of administrative data to study physician and system-level characteristics associated with use of low-value care. His interest at CDPE is studying persons who inject drugs (PWID) within the Ontario integrated Supervised Injection Site (OiSIS) prospective cohort to identify characteristics associated with providing injection initiation assistance to injection-naive individuals. He is currently a PhD in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and holds a Masters of Public Health from the University of Saskatchewan.
Zoë Greenwald is a Research Coordinator at the CDPE. She is an epidemiologist contributing to diverse projects stemming from a longitudinal cohort of people who use drugs in Toronto. Zoë is currently pursuing her PhD in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and holds a Master of Science in Epidemiology and a Bachelor of Arts & Sciences from McGill University. Her research interests lie in infectious disease epidemiology (particularly the treatment and prevention of Hepatitis C, HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood borne infections), harm reduction, and health disparities research.