The Faculty of Health welcomes 10 new faculty and/or new faculty appointments, including: Ali Abdul Sater (kinesiology); Fatou Bagayogo (health policy and management); Claudia Chaufan (health policy and management); Celina Da Silva (nursing); Christo El Morr (health policy and management); Lyndsay Hayhurst (kinesiology); Monique Herbert (psychology); Marina Morrow (health policy and management); Amy Muise (psychology); and Shelley Walkerley (nursing).
“On behalf of all my colleagues in the Faculty of Health, I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to all the faculty who are joining us for the first time. I'd also like to offer best wishes to individuals who have been with us but are transitioning into new roles,” said Faculty of Health Dean Paul McDonald. “As one of the ‘newbies,’ I can only hope that your introduction to York, the Faculty of Health and all the units within our community has been as positive as mine. We're truly delighted to have such a remarkably talented cohort join us. You are joining a dynamic, progressive and collegial faculty committed to excellence in teaching, research and citizenship, and we know you will fit right in."
Ali Abdul-Sater has studied the innate immune response and host-pathogen interaction with a focus on the regulatory mechanisms of inflammation for over 10 years, and joins the Faculty of Health as an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science. His research will focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms through which exercise regulates inflammation and the innate immune response.
Abdul-Sater earned his MSc in biochemistry from the American University of Beirut in 2005, and his PhD in quantitative and systems biology from the University of California in 2010. He pursued his postdoctoral studies in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University in New York City for three years before moving to Canada in 2013, where he started his second postdoctoral fellowship in the immunology department at the University of Toronto.
Fatou Bagayogo is researching the organization of cancer care, including a project about inter-professional collaboration and practice change in the care of older cancer patients. Another project looks at explaining organizational and professional processes that influence health-care utilization (specifically emergency room visits) by endometrial cancer patients.
In her research, Bagayogo mostly uses case studies involving semi-structured interviews with physicians and nurses, document analysis and administrative records. For theoretical bases, she draws from the literature on organization studies and sociology of professions. Her postdoctoral work involved collaborating with a multidisciplinary team of health-care management researchers to rethink the way care processes can be optimized in a large urban hospital. She spent about three years collecting data in this hospital and participated in a number of invited presentations to its professional and administrative staff. She is a member of the Canadian Association for Health Services & Policy Research and the Quebec Network on Nursing Intervention Research (RRISIQ). Her research is published in the Journal of Health Organization and Management, Age and Ageing and Journal of the Association for Information Systems.
Claudia Chaufan pursued her MD at the University of Buenos Aires and her PhD in sociology with a notation in philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, bringing an interdisciplinary and international background to York U. After a decade in medical practice in her native Argentina and upon immigrating to the United States, Chaufan pursued studies in sociology and philosophy, compelled by the realization of the extraordinary inequities in health and health care in her new home country. Her medical background led her to use Type 2 diabetes and obesity, her areas of clinical expertise, as case studies to illuminate the power dynamics driving these inequities.
Over time, her research expanded to include the comparative study of health systems and how the global architecture of economic (IMF, World Bank), military (NATO) and political/policy (UN/WHO) institutions, as well as the dynamics of imperialism/colonialism/neocolonialism, shape health and other social inequalities throughout the world. Chaufan is interested in these processes as they pertain to the history of, and current developments in, popular left movements in Latin America that have shown that indeed “another world is possible.” She does her best to incorporate their lessons into her scholarly work, including her teaching, an activity she has a passion for.
Chaufan came to York University in 2015 on a U.S. Fulbright Research Chair and fell in love with its intellectual and activist environment and the extraordinary cosmopolitanism of the student population.
Celina Da Silva is a new assistant professor in the School of Nursing. Her program of research relates to her career objectives and research interests in the area of innovation in nursing and health professions education, with a particular focus on high fidelity and virtual simulations, as well as online learning. Some of her research includes being a principal investigator on the study “Simulated Practice Centre (SPC) Program Evaluation, George Brown College (GBC), Health Sciences Centre,” which generated qualitative data related to the nursing simulation program at GBC to better support future development of inter-professional simulation education for health professions students.
Before joining York, she was a nursing professor and a simulationist at the Collaborative Ryerson, Centennial and George Brown College Baccalaureate Nursing Program (George Brown site) for 10 years. Da Silva completed her PhD at the University of Toronto. She has experience as a pediatric nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children and as a gerontological nurse at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.
Christo El Morr is an assistant professor of health informatics at the School of Health Policy & Management at York University. His cross-disciplinary research is community-based. His research interests focus on health virtual communities, mobile communities, e-collaboration, particularly in the domain of chronic disease management, and health promotion: peripheral arterial disease, kidney diseases and mental health. He also has research interests in hospital patient services and patient quality of care (e.g. readmission patterns, radiation dose reduction), and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). El Morr has published books, chapters and articles in these areas.
He particularly enjoys working in applied research in partnerships with the IT industry, and he received funds from the Ontario Centres of Excellence – Voucher for Innovation Program (OCE - VIP) and the Canadian Institute for Health Research – eHealth Innovations Partnership Program (CIHR-eHIPP). He consulted for international organizations and served as an expert reviewer for the Ministry of Research & Innovation, Ontario. He is also a research scientist at North York General Hospital and works with collaborators at St. Michael's Hospital.
In 2016, he received recognition as a York University Research Leader.
Lyndsay Hayhurst is an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science at York University. Her research interests include sport for development and peace, gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health in/through SDP, cultural studies of girlhood, postcolonial feminist theory, global governance, international relations and corporate social responsibility. Her current research focuses on two projects funded by Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grants. The first project focuses on the use of non-human objects and technologies in sport for development and peace – in particular, the bicycle – as possible catalysts for development; the second study investigates how the politics of privatized aid provided by the extractives sector shapes sport-focused health and development interventions that target Indigenous youth in Canada and Australia.
Hayhurst has previously worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Right to Play. She is a co-editor of Beyond Sport for Development and Peace: Transnational perspectives on theory, policy and practice, and her publications have appeared in Women’s Studies International Forum; Gender, Place & Culture; Third World Quarterly; and Sociology of Sport Journal.
This year, she will teach International Development & Sport (4310) and Aboriginal Physical Activity & Community Health (4315).
Monique Herbert has extensive experience teaching introductory statistics in multiple sections over multiple years using different teaching platforms (i.e. in person and online). Her teaching evaluations from students highlight her success as an instructor, describing her as an outstanding and highly sought after teacher. She has considerable experience as a statistical consultant for both academics and provincial agencies. Overall, she is an incredibly accomplished instructor in quantitative methods for psychological science. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) highest teaching award, the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching.
Marina Morrow is the incoming chair of the School of Health Policy & Management. She has a PhD in community psychology from OISE/UT (1997) and her research is in critical health policy with a focus on mental health reform; health and social inequities; social justice, neoliberal reforms and health.
Before joining the School of Health Policy & Management, she was a charter faculty member of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in B.C. Morrow is the lead editor of Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health, forthcoming University of Toronto Press. Her research strongly supports public scholarship and collaborative research partnerships with community-based organizations, health-care practitioners, advocates and policy decision makers.
Amy Muise conducts research on how sexual intimacy can promote healthy long-term relationships. In doing so, she has been remarkably productive, with 33 career publications (14 first-author) in top journals. This is a highly impressive achievement, even more so in light of her relatively early stage of career as a postdoctoral fellow. Moreover, she employs a diverse research skill set, including dyadic and longitudinal designs, as well as daily diary approaches. Her work has received considerable attention in both the scientific and popular media, including coverage in the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Time magazine and national television (Global, CTV).
Shelley Walkerley’s educational background includes a nursing diploma from the Osler School of Nursing in Toronto, a BScN and a primary health-care nurse practitioner (PHCNP) certificate from York University, and a master's of nursing and a PhD (nursing) from the University of Toronto. Her doctoral thesis (2013) explored the factors that hinder or facilitate the provision of smoking cessation interventions by RNs and NPs in primary care settings.
Walkerley has served as the nurse practitioner program coordinator at York University since 2010 and has been contract faculty in the School of Nursing during that time. She is a primary health-care nurse practitioner with a specific clinical focus on tobacco dependence, tuberculosis and other respiratory conditions. She is also a certified in equine-assisted psychotherapy.