DLSPH Welcomes Drs. Abdallah Daar and Andrea Cortinois
July 25/2014
As of July 1, Dr. Abdallah Daar has returned from the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health at University Health Network (UHN), where he was Director of Ethics and Commercialization. He rejoins the core DLSPH faculty as Professor of Clinical Public Health, Chair of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s undergraduate initiative in global and public health and leader of the School’s undergraduate gateway course in global and public health, “Grand Opportunities in Global Health.” Professor Daar is also co-chairing, with Rani Kotha, Alejandro Jadad, and Ross Upshur, the Global Health Summit from November 3-5, 2014. Professor Daar is also a Professor of Surgery in the Faculty of Medicine.
The second appointment to our core faculty as of July 1 is Dr. Andrea Cortinois, who joins us from UHN’s Centre for Global e-Health Innovation to transform the current MPH emphasis program in global health into a full diploma program. Professor Cortinois is co-chair, with Professor Daar, of the undergraduate initiative in global and public health and co-leader of the School’s undergraduate gateway course in global and public health, “Grand Opportunities in Global Health.” Dr. Cortinois received his PhD from U of T’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation.
Please welcome Professors Daar and Cortinois to their new positions in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and read their full biographies below.
Abdallah Daar was born in Tanzania, started medical school at Makerere University in Uganda, escaped Idi Amin’s regime and completed medical schooling at the University of London. At the University of Oxford he trained in both surgery and internal medicine, and did a PhD (DPhil) in immunology, and a fellowship in clinical organ transplantation. He was on the faculty of the Nuffield Department of Surgery at Oxford University for several years before going to the Middle East to help start two medical schools, an institute for biomedical research and two clinical transplant programs. He was the foundation chair of surgery in Oman and chair of the curriculum committee for a decade before moving to the University of Toronto in 2001 when he was appointed professor of Public Health Sciences with a cross-appointment in surgery.
Professor Daar's academic career has spanned biomedical sciences, organ transplantation, surgery, global health, medical education, and bioethics. He has worked for more than 20 years in various advisory or consulting capacities with the World Health Organization, most recently on chronic non-communicable diseases and global mental health, and prior to that led an independent external review of its Special Program on Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. He is a member of UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee and was for many years a member of the Ethics Committees of both the Human Genome Organization and the International Transplantation Society. The UN Secretary General recently appointed him to his Scientific Advisory Board. He is Chair of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University International Institute of Global Health.
In addition to his academic appointments at University of Toronto, Professor Daar is a Senior Scientist at UHN’s Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, is Director of Ethics and Commercialization at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre, and was the Chief Science and Ethics Officer of Grand Challenges Canada until June 30, 2014. He sits on the boards of two research funding agencies: Grand Challenges Canada (where he also chairs the Scientific Advisory Board) and Genome Canada, and was the founding chair of a third international research funding agency, the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases. He also sits on the board of The Centre for Applied Genomics. He has in recent years chaired review committees of the academic programs of the Aga Khan University Faculty of Arts and Science, and of its new medical program in Nairobi.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the New York Academy of Sciences. He is a Senior Fellow of Massey College, and is a fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.
His international awards include the Hunterian Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics of Science, and he holds the official world record for performing the youngest cadaveric kidney transplant. He has been awarded the Anthony Miller Prize for Research Excellence at the University of Toronto and the Genomics and Society Award of Genome Ontario.
Professor Daar’s last book (with Peter Singer) was The Grandest Challenge: Taking Life-saving Science from Lab to Village, and is currently working on his seventh book entitled “Garment of Destiny.” He has more than 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and about 75 chapters in various books, in addition to many monographs and reports. He has led or been part of major research grants totaling more than $50 million in the last decade or so.
Born in Italy, Professor Andrea Cortinois worked as a freelance journalist in the 1980s, collaborating with several newspapers, magazines and radio stations. His interests on the links between socioeconomic development and health, and the relationships between high- and low-income countries, pushed him to embrace a career in global public health.
After completing an undergraduate degree in human biology in Italy and a Masters of Public Health in the UK, Professor Cortinois spent several years conducting health services research, managing health-related interventions, and teaching at the postgraduate level in low-income countries, mainly in Latin America.
In 1998, he moved to Canada where he completed a PhD in the Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation explored the role of information and communication technologies in support of recent immigrants from non-dominant ethno-linguistic backgrounds.
Over the past several years, Professor Cortinois has led the “Multiculturalism and Health” research stream within the People, Health Equity and Innovation Research Group (Phi Group) at UHN’s Centre for Global eHealth Innovation. At the Centre, he has led research projects focusing on the application of new information and communication technologies to reach marginalized population groups.
Professor Cortinois is a former Chair of the Canadian Society for International Health and a former board member of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research. From time to time, he still collaborates with Italian newspapers.