About CHEC | CCRL

Jim Dunn is the Senator William McMaster Chair in Urban Health Equity. Working with communities in southern Ontario and beyond, Jim has explored how housing, economic inequality and attributes of neighbourhoods affect residents’ mental and physical health. Since 2005, Jim has been following residents of Toronto’s Regent Park public housing complex through a redevelopment project, finding clear evidence that people who feel safer and more satisfied with their housing also enjoy improvements to their overall health. He has also spent more than a decade studying the impact subsidized housing has on the mental health of its residents in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

David Amborski is the founding director of the Centre for Urban Research and Land Development and is the academic director of Ryerson’s City Building Institute. His research and consulting interests lie in the areas where urban planning interfaces with economics, especially in the domains of urban policy, along with land and housing development. He has taught seminars for in-career government officials both in Canada and internationally.

Emma Baker is Professor of Housing Research at the University of Adelaide where she leads the Housing and Healthy Cities Research Group. Her work examines the health impacts of housing, and location in urban and regional environments, producing academic, as well as policy-relevant research. She is currently leading the construction of a national housing conditions dataset. Recent publications include an analysis of the effects of cold housing on individual health, a quantification of the health outcomes of housing security and stability, and and assessment of the cumulative influence of multiple housing problems on health and wellbeing.

Martin Gallié is a law professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He has studied housing conditions for domestic workers and migrant farm workers, litigation in housing law in Nunavik and evictions procedures in Canada, France and the United States. His methods include field research directly observing housing tribunal proceedings and his work is often conducted in partnership with legal advocacy organizations. He is currently studying litigation about unhealthy conditions and mechanisms to fight against them.

Ken Gibb is Director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE), Professor in Housing Economics (Urban Studies) within the School of Social and Political Sciences, amongst several other roles. Ken’s research interests are focused on the economic, financial and policy dimensions of housing. His current interests are on the financing and economics of social and affordable housing, and, the application of behavioural economics to housing. Ken has carried out research for government departments, the Economic and Social Research Council, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, trade bodies, the private sector and international organisations like the OECD.

Dr. Stephen Hwang is the Director of the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital, where he holds the University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital Chair in Homelessness, Housing, and Health. He is known internationally for his research on interventions to improve the health of people experiencing homelessness and to interrupt chronic homelessness itself. Dr. Hwang is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a practicing physician in general internal medicine.

Visit St. Michaels website.

Mylène Riva holds the Canada Research Chair in Housing, Community and Health and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University. The research activities of Prof. Riva and her team are focused on the socio-environmental determinants of health, and especially on housing and communities as important place-based determinants of health and as settings for interventions to improve population health and to reduce inequalities. She leads and collaborates on various scientific initiatives in these areas.

Julia Woodhall-Melnik is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of New Brunswick and Director of the Laboratory for Housing and Mental Health. Julia’s research explores housing as a social determinant of physical and mental health, addiction and concurrent disorders. She also studies the impacts of climate change on housing outcomes and mental health and has conducted research on the mental health effects of housing loss due to flooding.

Dr. Pat O’Campo is a social epidemiologist whose research includes examinations of the social determinants of adult mental health, intimate partner violence and children’s well-being, prevention of homelessness and how residential neighborhoods influence well-being. She has been conducting research on gender inequalities and women’s health for over 25 years. Dr. O’Campo’s work often focuses on upstream determinants of health including quantifying the impacts of structural issues and social programs on women’s well-being.