The Analytics for Public Health (A4PH) research group is made up of an interdisciplinary team of nationally and internationally renowned researchers and public health leaders with expertise in:
- infectious diseases (HBV, HCV, HIV, sexually transmitted infections, COVID-19)
- quantitative epidemiologic methods
- analysis and management of large laboratory and health services linked datasets
- data science machine learning
- artificial intelligence and natural language processing
- behavioural science
View team members by category
Naveed Janjua
Executive Director of Data and Analytic Services
Hind Sbihi
Senior Scientist
Caren Rose
Senior Scientist
Hasina Samji
Senior Scientist
James Wilton
Epidemiologist
Mawuena Binka
Research Scientist
Prince Adu
Health Systems Researcher
Héctor Alexander Velásquez García
Biostatistician and Quantitative Epidemiologist
Stanley Wong
Biostatistician
Julia Li
Biostatistician
Sean Harrigan
Epidemiologist
Afraz Khan
Data Analyst
Chad Fibke
Data Analyst
Terri-Buller Taylor
Community Engagement and Knowledge Translation Lead
Georgine Cua
Research Coordinator
Zaeema Naveed
Post-doctoral Fellow
Leila Amiri
Research Staff
Ahmed Aburaed
Post-doctoral Fellow
Richard Morrow
Post-doctoral Fellow
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Naveed Janjua
Executive Director of Data and Analytic Services
Dr. Naveed Zafar Janjua is an epidemiologist and the Executive Director of Data and Analytic Services at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC); and a Clinical Professor at the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia (UBC). Dr. Janjua is a Medical Doctor (MBBS) with a Master’s of Science (MSc) degree in Epidemiology & Biostatistics and Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH). He provides leadership on data and analytics for population health surveillance and monitoring such as:
The Analytics for Public Health is Dr. Janjua’s program of research, which includes a variety of research projects including the BC COVID-19 Cohort and the BC Mix COVID-19 Survey. He also leads the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort, and the Hepatitis Education Canada, a program that develops culturally and linguistically sensitive hepatitis C education resources for the population, hepatitis patients and health care providers.
- developing and maintaining surveillance systems
- utilizing various big data streams for real-time population health monitoring, and
- enabling a precision public health approach for population health management
The Analytics for Public Health is Dr. Janjua’s program of research, which includes a variety of research projects including the BC COVID-19 Cohort and the BC Mix COVID-19 Survey. He also leads the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort, and the Hepatitis Education Canada, a program that develops culturally and linguistically sensitive hepatitis C education resources for the population, hepatitis patients and health care providers.
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Hind Sbihi
Senior Scientist
Dr. Hind Sbihi (she/her) is a Senior Scientist in the Data & Analytics Services at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health.
She was previously a senior epidemiologist at the Office of the Public Health Officer in the BC Provincial Ministry of Health, after completing her postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Stuart Turvey’s lab at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and PhD with Dr. Michael Brauer at UBC SPPH. Throughout her training, her research focused on the human health effects of the built environment (air pollution, natural spaces, microbiome) in a large national birth cohort with the goal to identify intervention strategies to reduce exposures and improve health.
She has expertise in the implementation and analysis of observational cohort studies that leverage large administrative health databases via her collaboration as a co-investigator on different projects spanning childhood asthma and cognitive development to healthy aging and cognitive impairment in adults. Dr. Sbihi is the principal investigator of the CIHR’s funded project to measure the differential impact of variants of concern on COVID-19 severity and health inequities and co-Principal Investigator of CIHR’s funded project to measure the predictors and burden of post-acute COVID-19 syndrome (long-COVID) with a focus on equity.
She was previously a senior epidemiologist at the Office of the Public Health Officer in the BC Provincial Ministry of Health, after completing her postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Stuart Turvey’s lab at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and PhD with Dr. Michael Brauer at UBC SPPH. Throughout her training, her research focused on the human health effects of the built environment (air pollution, natural spaces, microbiome) in a large national birth cohort with the goal to identify intervention strategies to reduce exposures and improve health.
She has expertise in the implementation and analysis of observational cohort studies that leverage large administrative health databases via her collaboration as a co-investigator on different projects spanning childhood asthma and cognitive development to healthy aging and cognitive impairment in adults. Dr. Sbihi is the principal investigator of the CIHR’s funded project to measure the differential impact of variants of concern on COVID-19 severity and health inequities and co-Principal Investigator of CIHR’s funded project to measure the predictors and burden of post-acute COVID-19 syndrome (long-COVID) with a focus on equity.
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Caren Rose
Senior Scientist
Caren Rose is a Senior Scientist on the Analytics for Public Health team.
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Hasina Samji
Senior Scientist
Dr. Hasina Samji (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a Senior Scientist in Population Mental Wellbeing in the Population and Public Health Division at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. She completed her PhD in infectious disease epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has expertise in the design and implementation of observational cohort studies and analysis of large administrative health databases.
Dr. Samji leads the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), an interdisciplinary study measuring predictors of positive youth well-being, mental health, and development in high school students in collaboration with the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP-UBC), community, clinical and policy partners, and youth themselves. The YDI elucidates upstream skill-development and structural supports for mental illness prevention and promotion of positive trajectories for young people. She is also the co-Principal Investigator of the BC Children’s Hospital’s Personal Impacts of COVID-19 Survey (PICS) study to measure the population-level mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the BC site PI of the COVAXHIV study examining COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness among people living with HIV
Dr. Samji leads the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), an interdisciplinary study measuring predictors of positive youth well-being, mental health, and development in high school students in collaboration with the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP-UBC), community, clinical and policy partners, and youth themselves. The YDI elucidates upstream skill-development and structural supports for mental illness prevention and promotion of positive trajectories for young people. She is also the co-Principal Investigator of the BC Children’s Hospital’s Personal Impacts of COVID-19 Survey (PICS) study to measure the population-level mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the BC site PI of the COVAXHIV study examining COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness among people living with HIV
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Joseph Puyat
Scientist
Dr. Puyat is an Assistant Professor (Partner) at the UBC School of Population and Public Health and a Scientist at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences (CHEOS). He obtained his PhD in Population and Public Health from the University of British Columbia and has previous training in Health Care and Epidemiology (MSc) and Social Psychology (MA).
In his previous research, Dr. Puyat used linked health administrative data from the province of British Columbia to study gaps and disparities in depression care and examine whether the introduction of physician incentives impacted the magnitude of existing care gaps and disparities. In his current work, he is exploring how the prevalence and burden of depression at the population level can be reduced over time by ensuring that treatment approaches are tailored to individuals’ characteristics; eliminating treatment disparities; and, promoting community-based activities that have therapeutic and preventive effects.
Dr. Puyat provides data analytic support to various projects including the COVAXHIV project, which aims to characterize the burden of Covid-19 disease and estimate the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among people living with HIV.
In his previous research, Dr. Puyat used linked health administrative data from the province of British Columbia to study gaps and disparities in depression care and examine whether the introduction of physician incentives impacted the magnitude of existing care gaps and disparities. In his current work, he is exploring how the prevalence and burden of depression at the population level can be reduced over time by ensuring that treatment approaches are tailored to individuals’ characteristics; eliminating treatment disparities; and, promoting community-based activities that have therapeutic and preventive effects.
Dr. Puyat provides data analytic support to various projects including the COVAXHIV project, which aims to characterize the burden of Covid-19 disease and estimate the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among people living with HIV.
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James Wilton
Epidemiologist
James Wilton is an Epidemiologist with the Data & Analytics Services team at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control (BCCDC) where he is the BCCDC epi lead for the BC COVID-19 Cohort (BCC19C). James has extensive experience with large administrative healthcare datasets and previously worked with the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort team on a CIHR grant aimed at characterizing patterns of prescription opioid use and their association with harm, including overdose, injection drug use and hepatitis C infection.
James has a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Toronto and an undergraduate degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of British Columbia. Prior to working at the BCCDC, he worked in several BC Cancer Agency laboratories before transitioning to public health and working in HIV education, research and surveillance at CATIE (Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange) and the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.
James has a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Toronto and an undergraduate degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of British Columbia. Prior to working at the BCCDC, he worked in several BC Cancer Agency laboratories before transitioning to public health and working in HIV education, research and surveillance at CATIE (Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange) and the Ontario HIV Treatment Network.
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Mawuena Binka
Research Scientist
Dr. Mawuena Binka, is a Research Scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). She has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, USA, and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of British Columbia in British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Binka’s work is focused on infectious disease epidemiology, with particular emphasis on HBV, HCV, HIV and SARS-CoV-2 infection. She is passionate about the use of administrative data to address inequities in health service delivery and health outcomes, especially among marginalized groups. Dr. Binka is an investigator with the British Columbia Hepatitis Testers Cohort and a co-Principal Investigator on projects aimed at characterizing the population-level disease burden associated with hepatitis B and hepatitis C in British Columbia, as well as assessing the impact of COVID-19 and related control measures on healthcare delivery for both diseases. Dr. Binka is currently leading the efforts to define a population-based cohort of people diagnosed with long-COVID in British Columbia, and subsequent analyses aimed at: (i) characterizing the factors associated with long-COVID diagnosis and (ii) examining health-related outcomes post-diagnosis.
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Prince Adu
Health Systems Researcher
Prince Adu is a health systems researcher who leads the BC COVID-19 Population Mixing Patterns Survey (BC-MIX Survey). He has a PhD in Population and Public Health from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He obtained a Master of Public Health and a Master’s in International Development Studies from Ohio University, Athens. He loves dancing, cooking and playing soccer.
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Héctor Alexander Velásquez García
Biostatistician and Quantitative Epidemiologist
Dr. Héctor Alexander Velásquez García is a Biostatistician and Quantitative Epidemiologist at the BC Centre for Disease Control, with a rather heterogeneous background. Before his PhD training (School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia), he spent five years as a clinician (Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia) in a wide variety of settings, ranging from rural isolated areas to tertiary care hospitals, and accumulated over eight years of experience in medical informatics (University of California, Davis).
Throughout the course of his MPH (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), he specialized in epidemiological and biostatistical methods for public health and clinical research; he also received training in risk sciences and public policy. He worked on advanced biostatistical and epidemiological techniques in public health research, meta-analyses, and molecular epidemiology. He has sound knowledge of explanatory and predictive model building, model validation techniques, precision evaluation, survival analysis, as well as extensive experience with linkage and data-mining of large administrative health databases, relational databases, and causal inference techniques to deal with confounding in observational studies (such as propensity score matching and inverse-probability weighting estimators). He is highly experienced in the development and application of algorithms to identify chronic comorbidities and other health-related conditions using administrative data.
Throughout the course of his MPH (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), he specialized in epidemiological and biostatistical methods for public health and clinical research; he also received training in risk sciences and public policy. He worked on advanced biostatistical and epidemiological techniques in public health research, meta-analyses, and molecular epidemiology. He has sound knowledge of explanatory and predictive model building, model validation techniques, precision evaluation, survival analysis, as well as extensive experience with linkage and data-mining of large administrative health databases, relational databases, and causal inference techniques to deal with confounding in observational studies (such as propensity score matching and inverse-probability weighting estimators). He is highly experienced in the development and application of algorithms to identify chronic comorbidities and other health-related conditions using administrative data.
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Younathan Abdia
Biostatistician
Dr. Younathan Abdia is Biostatistician with Data Analytics and Services (DAS) at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BC CDC). Dr. Abdia holds an MSc in Statistics from the Ohio State University and PhD in Biostatistics from University of Louisville. Prior to joining BC CDC, Dr. Abdia was working as a Postdoctoral Fellow under Dr. Naveed Janjua supervision at the University of British Columbia and worked as Research Specialist at the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School. At BC CDC, Dr. Abdia is working on projects related to COVID-19 infection and vaccine effectiveness. His research interests include statistical methods related to observational studies, causal inference, machine learning, spatial statistics and survival analysis.
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Stanley Wong
Biostatistician
Stanley Wong is a Biostatistician at the UBC Centre for Disease Control (UBC CDC). His responsibilities involve linking health databases for further analysis and analyzing studies in the BCC19C/BC Mix project, which is related to COVID-19. He received his Master’s degree in statistics at the University of Victoria (UVic). Before joining UBC CDC, he assumed several positions related to data linkage, management, and analysis for public health organizations.
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Julia Li
Biostatistician
Julia Li is a Biostatistician in the BCC19C program at the UBC Centre for Disease Control (UBC CDC). She contributes to develop analysis plans and conduct analysis of linked datasets using various statistical techniques for various COVID-19 integrate cohorts. She received her MSc degree in Statistics at Memorial University of Newfound and she is a Ph.D Candidate in Statistics at University of Calgary.
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Sean Harrigan
Epidemiologist
Sean Harrigan is an Epidemiologist working in research and surveillance in COVID-19 related projects for the UBC Centre for Disease Control (UBC-CDC) and BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). His work is focused on understanding how SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern impact disease severity and health outcomes using the BCC19C, a large administrative database, as well are also using SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data to evaluate the impact of other emerging variants.
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Afraz Khan
Data Analyst
Afraz Khan is a Data Analyst at the BCCDC. Afraz holds an MSc Degree in Finance from the University of British Columbia (2021) and an MEng degree from Imperial College London (2018). He is currently working on COVID modelling and is actively involved in Analytical work at the BCCDC.
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Chad Fibke
Data Analyst
Chad Fibke is a Data Analyst at the BC Centre for Disease Control. Chad holds a Master’s of Science (MSc) degree in Population and Public Health and a Bachelor’s degree in Immunology and Infection. At BCCDC, he contributes to the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 data for the COVID-19 Sequencing and Modelling Integrated with Laboratory and Epidemiological Sources (SMILES) and Differential impact of variants of concern on COVID-19 severity and health inequities projects. His research experience includes leveraging both bioinformatic and epidemiological approaches to characterize the genomic epidemiology of Extra-intestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli and SARS-CoV-2. Other work includes investigating the application of circulating cell-free DNA to cancer and non-invasive prenatal screening.
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Adeleke Fowokan
Epidemiologist
Dr. Adeleke Fowokan is an Epidemiologist with the Data and Analytics Services of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. He is currently working on a research project that seeks to understand COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness amongst people living with HIV. He completed his PhD at Simon Fraser University and his Master’s in Public Health degree at the University of Essex, England. He is interested in social and global health epidemiology, with a particular focus on chronic disease outcomes in child populations.
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Braeden Klaver
Data Scientist
Braeden Klaver is a Data Scientist and holds a BHSc and MPH. Over the last few years, he has co-authored an analysis of a tuberculosis outbreak on a northern First Nations reserve and more recently assisted with COVID-19 surveillance while at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). During this time Braeden has supported the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory team in the creation of public reports, as well as helped develop the Whole Genome Sequencing monitoring and reporting pipelines. Further, Braeden has facilitated the integration of laboratory data to the vaccination registry and supported epidemiologists with the surveillance of vaccine breakthrough infections by COVID-19 variants of concern.
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Terri-Buller Taylor
Community Engagement and Knowledge Translation Lead
Dr. Terri Buller-Taylor, PhD is the Community Engagement and Knowledge Translation Lead for the “Impact of COVID-19 and related control measures on the Hepatitis C virus care cascade”. She obtained a PhD from the University of British Columbia with supervisors and training from: UBC Department of Psychology, the UBC Institute of Health Promotion Research (this type of work is now done through UBC’s School of Population and Public Health), and the UBC Faculty of Education. Before joining the BCCDC team, she worked as a research consultant on medical education research projects including: research pertaining to medical undergraduate performance indicators; and medical school graduates’ preparedness for residency. She has also consulted on health-related research projects including those related to: hepatitis C prevention, school-based health promotion, and strategies to impact determinants of health.
While at the BCCDC, Dr. Buller-Taylor has conducted quality improvement studies that have involved collaborations with health care providers, community groups, people with lived/living experience of hepatitis C, STBBIs and incarceration. These studies have helped to inform the development of online hepatitis C and STBBI courses (Hepatitis C: The Basics, Hepatitis C Course for Public Health Providers, STBBIs in Corrections – for Health Providers, STBBIs in Corrections for Corrections Staff), surveys and recommended policy and guidelines for STBBI testing in BC correctional facilities. A priority with this work is striving to develop educational products that are non-stigmatizing, culturally safe, and accessible to people with varying literacy levels.
While at the BCCDC, Dr. Buller-Taylor has conducted quality improvement studies that have involved collaborations with health care providers, community groups, people with lived/living experience of hepatitis C, STBBIs and incarceration. These studies have helped to inform the development of online hepatitis C and STBBI courses (Hepatitis C: The Basics, Hepatitis C Course for Public Health Providers, STBBIs in Corrections – for Health Providers, STBBIs in Corrections for Corrections Staff), surveys and recommended policy and guidelines for STBBI testing in BC correctional facilities. A priority with this work is striving to develop educational products that are non-stigmatizing, culturally safe, and accessible to people with varying literacy levels.
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Georgine Cua
Research Coordinator
Georgine Cua is a Research Coordinator with UBC Centre for Disease Control. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Saskatchewan and a Bachelor of Science Honours degree specializing in Cellular, Anatomical and Physiological Sciences from the University of British Columbia. At her current role, Georgine coordinates and supports the research projects under the Analytics for Public Health research group. Prior to joining the research team, Georgine has been involved in a vast array of public health roles including Case and Contact Tracing for emerging pathogens, clinical research as well as community-based research engagement. Her research interests include global health, health program evaluation, and knowledge translation and exchange.
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Hyeju Jang
Post-doctoral Fellow
Dr. Hyeju Jang is a research associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia and the BC Centre for Disease Control. She was a CIHR Health System Impact postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia and the BC Centre for Disease Control. Her research interests include natural language processing, computational linguistics, discourse analysis, and text mining in various domains. Specifically, her current research is about applying NLP and text mining to the health domain in order to help chronic disease management by processing patient-generated language. She received her PhD in’ Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Her PhD dissertation focused on computationally modeling metaphor in order to capture how metaphor is used and identify a broader spectrum of predictors from the discourse context that contribute towards its detection.
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Zaeema Naveed
Post-doctoral Fellow
Zaeema Naveed is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia. She obtained her medical training (MBBS) and the Master of Science in Public Health degree from Pakistan, followed by Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Her primary area of interest is infectious disease epidemiology. During her Ph.D., she has worked on a multitude of projects, including infectious and chronic disease, mental and behavioral health, and health services. Her doctoral dissertation was focused on neurocognitive impairment in people living with HIV (PLWH). At her current position, she is responsible for designing epidemiological studies and analyses of data related to COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness.
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Notice Ringa
Post-doctoral Fellow
Dr. Notice Ringa is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia. He holds a PhD and MSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of Guelph, and a Bachelor of Education (Mathematics) from the University of Botswana. Prior to joining the research team, Notice has been a Researcher of mathematical epidemiology and a Lecturer of mathematics at Botswana International University of Science and Technology. He has also been a Postdoctoral Fellow in computational mathematics at York University. He has carried out research in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases including foot and mouth disease, influenza, HIV and COVID-19. Currently, Notice supports the BC Mix COVID-19 Survey and mathematical modeling teams at British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. He is involved in the analysis of social contact rate and population mobility data and their association to the dynamics of COVID-19, and modeling COVID-19 transmission across local health authorities of British Columbia.
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Yue Shen
Student
Yue Shen is a Student on the Analytics for Public Health team.
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Yuki (Weng-Sut) Sio
Student
Yuki (Weng-Sut) Sio is a Student on the Analytics for Public Health team.
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Leila Amiri
Research Staff
Leila Amiri is a Research Staff on the Analytics for Public Health team.
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Ahmed Aburaed
Post-doctoral Fellow
Ahmed Aburaed is a Post-doctoral Fellow on the Analytics for Public Health team.
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Richard Morrow
Post-doctoral Fellow
Richard Morrow is a Post-doctoral Fellow on the Analytics for Public Health team.