Dr. Brenda Wilson 

Associate Dean Dr. Brenda Wilson, is academic unit head of the Division of Community Health and Humanities. She is responsible for providing academic leadership in education and research relating to population and applied health research and professional public health practice, and supporting the Faculty of Medicine’s social accountability mandate.

Dr. Wilson was appointed as Associate Dean in April 2018. She received a first class honours degree in Medical Science at the University of St. Andrews, followed by MB, ChB [MD] from the University of Edinburgh and MSc in Community Medicine from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. She completed initial residency training in general (internal) medicine, achieving Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (UK), followed by residency training in Public Health Medicine, achieving Membership of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (UK), and specialist accreditation with the Joint Committee on Higher Medical Education. She was elected to Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health in 2002. She is listed on the Specialist Register of the UK General Medical Council.

Dr. Wilson practiced full-time as a physician in the UK National Health Service from 1984-1991, with a leave of absence to work as a Medical Officer at Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital in Nqutu, South Africa in 1988. She joined the University of Aberdeen full time as Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Public Health (1991-2001). She joined the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine (now the School of Epidemiology and Public Health) at the University of Ottawa (2002-2018), promoted to Professor from Associate Professor in 2011. She has held visiting appointments with City University, London UK, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia.

Over a research career spanning three decades, Dr. Wilson has brought a population and public health perspective to research on emerging genomic technologies. Her academic and professional service contributions have also focused on promoting use of evidence and an understanding of the practice context to public health and disease prevention interventions more generally, including, most recently, her mandate as interim co-chair of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she served on the federal Covid-19 Testing and Screening Expert Advisory Panel, and was an expert witness to the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador on the legal challenge to the 2020 provincial entry restrictions.