Setting the Foundation

Eric is a full professor in the Sociology Department at York University. He has been involved in the HIV response for over two decades as an activist, researcher and, in the early years of the epidemic, as a community worker. Eric’s research focuses on the role that various forms of expertise play in governing contemporary health care problems. A recurring focus of his work is the biomedical and broader institutional and discursive response to the HIV epidemic in Canada.

Eric was the recipient of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research in the Faculty of Arts, York University, for 2006–2007. In 2014, he received the Dorothy E. Smith Scholar-Activist Award conferred by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. In 2015, he received the inaugural Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Award for Distinction in Social Justice Research from York University. In 2017, he received the CAHR-CANFAR Excellence in Research Award for the Social Sciences.

Eric is a Senior Editor of the Canadian Journal of Public Health and a member of the International Advisory Board of Critical Public Health. From 2011–2015, he served as board member of the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic (Ontario). He has served as a steering committee member of AIDS ACTION NOW! since 2008 and was a founding member of the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure, an organization in which he continues to play an active role. Over the past 10 years he has published widely on the topic of HIV criminalization in Canada.

Abhimanyu Sud is a physician and health services researcher based in Toronto, Ontario. He is an Assistant Professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto and Research Chair, Primary Care & Population Health Systems at Humber River Hospital. His clinical, research, education, and advocacy work focus on the complex intersections of chronic pain, mental illness, and opioid use.

Dr. Andrew Pinto is a family physician, director of the Upstream Lab at MAP, and CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Upstream Prevention in Primary Healthcare.

He is the founder and director of the Upstream Lab at MAP, a space to co-design and rigorously evaluate interventions that tackle the complex social factors that impact our health. Interventions are focused at multiple levels, including individual patients and families, health organizations, neighbourhoods and at the policy process.

Dr. Pinto is a scientist with MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, and a St. Michael’s Hospital staff physician. He is an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Family and Community Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine, as well as the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He serves as the Associate Director for Clinical Research of the University of Toronto Practice-Based Research Network (UTOPIAN). He was a Commonwealth Scholar, and a winner of an Early Research Award from the Ontario Government as well as a Clinician-Scientist Award from the University of Toronto. In 2019, he was awarded the PSI Graham Farquharson Knowledge Translation Fellowship.

Antoine Boivin, MD PhD is a practicing family physician and the Chairholder of the Canada Research Chair in Partnership with Patients and Communities. Working as a family physician in the community of Center-South Montreal, he completed his MSc and PhD in health services research in the United Kingdom and Netherlands. His research program for the past 15 years has focused on patient and citizen engagement in community care, health services delivery, science and policy. Co-founder and scientific director of the Center of excellence for partnership with patients and the public, he is also co-director of the Quebec SPOR Unit for Learning Health Systems, where he leads national initiatives on patient and public engagement evaluation. In 2020, he was awarded the Donald I. Rice award for vision and leadership by the Canadian College of Family Physicians.