Professor Nazilla Khanlou has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Ontario Women's Health Council (OWHC) Chair in Women's Mental Health Research at York, effective July 1. She will also be a professor in York’s School of Nursing, Faculty of Health.
The OWHC Chair will play a catalytic role in mounting an interdisciplinary program in women’s mental health with an emphasis on mechanisms that integrate research and education. Emphasis in the first five years will be on the mental health needs of special populations. The scope of the Chair’s activities will be university-wide and also include partnerships with regional, national and international communities.
Right: Nazilla Khanlou
Currently a professor in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Khanlou’s clinical background is in psychiatric nursing. Her overall program of research is situated in the interdisciplinary field of community-based mental health promotion in general, and mental health promotion among youth and women in multicultural and immigrant-receiving settings in particular.
Khanlou has received major peer-reviewed grants from federal and provincial research funding agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child & Youth Mental Health. Along with conducting policy informing research with the Status of Women Canada, she is currently the health and well-being domain leader of CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre and was a visiting scholar (2005-2006) at the Wellesley Urban Health Institute.
In addition, Khanlou has published numerous articles, books and reports on youth and women's mental health. She is involved in knowledge translation to the public through media. She has a PhD in clinical health sciences from McMaster University, a diploma in epidemiology and biostatistics from McGill University, an MSc in community health from the University of Toronto and a BScN from McMaster University.