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Presenter: Charles Larson

Theme: Global & Indigenous Health

Presenter: Dr. Stuart MacLeod, MD, PhD, FRCPC Vice President, Academic Liaison & Research Coordination Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia Child & Family Research Institute

Seminar Overview:
Please come and hear Dr. Stuart MacLeod speak about the work he is doing with the UBC based International Alliance for Better Medicines for Children. The IABMC works with the International Development Research Centre, Health Canada and a host of international partners such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Save the Children Fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their aim is to see that children in low income countries may have adequate access in future to essential medicines to reduce under-five mortality from neonatal sepsis, malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

Children and youth worldwide lack access to adequately tested and validated treatments for even common diseases. In low income settings the situation is compounded by limited opportunities for knowledge transfer and by inadequate fiscal resources that limit access to treatments proven effective. The result is 8 million deaths each year that are considered to be readily preventable. A growing number of child health specialists, pharmacologists and pharmacists are working with governments, pediatric regulators and support agencies to address the therapeutic objectives outlined in Millennium Development Goals: Goal 4 - Reduce child mortality, Goal 5 - Improve maternal health, and Goal 6 - Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Speaker Biography:
Since January 2003 Dr MacLeod has been a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia. During the period 2003 –– January 2010 he served as director of the Child & Family Research Institute at BC Children’’s Hospital. Prior to his move to British Columbia Dr MacLeod spent 14 years at the University of Toronto (pharmacology, clinical biochemistry, pharmacy, medicine, and pediatrics) and held hospital appointments at the University Health Network and The Hospital for Sick Children. In 1987 he became Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University and in 1992, the founding director of the Father Sean O’’Sullivan Research Centre, Hamilton, a position he held until June 2002.

Dr. MacLeod’’s main research interests are pediatric clinical pharmacology, patient safety, adverse drug reactions, drug policy, and optimal drug use for children. He has parallel interests in global child health and medical education and is currently studying the use of mobile phones to improve survival for children under the age of 5 years in rural western Uganda. He is the founder of the International Alliance for Better Medicines for Children.

Title: Health hazards and industrial hygiene in the oil and gas industry

Speaker: Robert Waterhouse, BSc, CIH
Industrial Hygienist, EH&S, Canadian Division, Encana

SPPH students will celebrate the last day of classes with a potluck luncheon in the SPPH lobby. Come and join in the fun.

Meet members of the University of Auckland's School of Population Health and their involvement in global health/indigenous health teaching programs.


Professor Alistair Woodward is Head of the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The School includes over 300 staff in 8 sections, covering most of the disciplines in primary care and public health. Alistair graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide, completed a Masters in Medical Science at the University of Nottingham, trained as a specialist in public health medicine in the UK, and then gained a PhD in Epidemiology (Adelaide). Prior to his appointment in Auckland in 2004, he was Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago Wellington. His major research interests are in environmental health and tobacco control. Recent work includes an international assessment of the effects of smoke-free policies, a community trial of home insulation, a 13 country study of cell phones and brain tumours, analysis of the public health benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation and follow-up of a cohort of 2600 cyclists. He has been a member of the New Zealand Health Research Council, and Chair of the Public Health Research Committee, and has also chaired the Public Health Advisory Committee for the NZ Minister of Health. He has worked extensively in the Pacific and Asia as a consultant for agencies such as WHO, UNEP and the Ford Foundation. He is presently Convening Lead Author of the health chapter in the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.


Associate Professor Chris Bullen is Director of the Clinical Trials Research Unit at the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The CTRU includes over 55 staff in four research themes (Nutrition and Physical activity, Cardiovascular Disease, Addictions and Health Informatics and Technology). Chris is a medical graduate with specialist training in public health medicine. He has worked in a wide range of clinical and public health roles in Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. He has an MPH from the University of Auckland, and a PhD in Community Medicine. His major current research interests are in pragmatic intervention trials of tobacco control innovations, specifically novel smoking cessation interventions. Chris is currently joint director of a new national tobacco control research programme to inform the halving of smoking prevalence in New Zealand in a decade; he is principal investigator on an efficacy trial of e-cigarettes and also PI on a trial of a novel cardiovascular polypill for medication adherence. He has had longstanding interests in housing and health research. He is a board member of the New Zealand National Heart Foundation and Chair of the Heart Foundation’s Public Health Research Strategic Advisory Committee. Chris also leads a successful programme in public health for senior medical students and contributes to postgraduate education in public health and global health at the School of Population Health.

Dr. Judith McCool completed her Master of Public Health 1997 and PhD in Health Psychology in 2002. She has been an active contributor to research in the field of tobacco control, media and health behaviours and risk perceptions research since 1998. Judith has been the lead investigator on numerous research projects funded by the Health Research Council and National Heart Foundation of New Zealand and an active co-investigator on other research projects. She is regularly involved in commentary on tobacco issues in the media, with the most recent based on her research on youth perceptions of plain packaging. Since being appointed to senior lecturer in global health, Judith has developed networks in Asia Pacific region and more recently in Chile and Colombia, where she has participated in country and regional forums for global health and tobacco control. The Global Health Group, led by Judith, been awarded a Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Development Award (2009) and an International Research Team Development Award (2010) to enhance international global health collaboration. She is the coordinator of Andrews Family fellowship initiative between the School of Population Health and the Fiji School of Medicine. Her major research interests include assessment of the impact of trade on health outcomes (child health, NCDs), tobacco industry activity in the Pacific region, media interpretations and health behaviours. Judith teaches global health within the Master of Public Health programme and is primary supervisor global health related MPH and PhD thesis on global health topics. Judith was guest editor for the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, Special Issue on Pacific Health (2011).

Patent system harmonization obligations found within international trade agreements have been subject to intense scrutiny over the past two decades due to the potential negative implications for public health in developing countries. In 1994, NAFTA became the first trade agreement to include patent system harmonization obligations. Mexico as a signatory to NAFTA was the first developing country to adopt the patent system of developed countries via patent system harmonization. This makes Mexico a particularly relevant and appropriately mature case study on the subject. The central research question I address is “Whether NAFTA patent system harmonization promotes access to medicines in Mexico, while incentivizing pharmaceutical R&D? An affirmative answer to this question is the argument that has been espoused by the U.S. Government and backed by the multi-national research-based pharmaceutical industry. This is a position, however, that has lacked confirmatory evidence.

My doctoral dissertation undertook a comparative legal analysis, a scoping study, and qualitative research to address this question. A key finding is that international trade agreements should be drafted with optimal pharmaceutical patent protection standards in mind. Further, patent system harmonization results in a net health benefit that can be maximized through the provision of feedback evidence todecision-makers in order to develop responsive laws and policy. Evidence was provided through qualitative research that the compulsory license, as the primary safeguard in the promotion of access, is an inadequate downstream mechanism.

Through this research I developed a proposal that: if we reform the granting of patent terms from a fixed 20-year life period to a flexible and adjustable term determined through an assessment of health and economic conditions that exist during any given time period, we will improve both global equity in access to medicines and reduce economic inefficiencies in our current model for pharmaceutical R&D, while maintaining adequate incentives to conduct pharmaceutical R&D. The proposed reform is akin to the use of interest rates as an economic growth and stabilization tool in monetary policy. It would require government patent/heath offices to analyze current global conditions in pharmaceutical access and R&D, and accordingly adjust the number of years of patent protection awarded. This novel contribution to the academic literature informs Canadian, Mexican, and other developing country decision makers on how to design appropriate policy for the benefit of public health.


Presenter: Benjamin Charles Warren
Ph.D. Candidate, LL.M., J.D., B.Comm

OEH Theme Meeting

Are you interested in becoming a graduate student in one of the School of Population and Public Health's seven programs (6 graduate and 1 residency)?

Learn more at the SPPH Admissions Information Session!

The session will feature an overview of the School, details of the criteria for admission and an opportunity to speak to representatives from each of the programs.

All prospective students are welcome!

Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Time: 5:00pm
Location: Rm. 143, 2206 East Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3

Please RSVP to jennifer.suratos@ubc.ca

SPPH Faculty Meeting