Dr. Hasina Samji

Disclosure

Dr. Hasina Samji is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a Senior Scientist in Population Mental Wellbeing in the Population and Public Health Division at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. She completed her PhD in infectious disease epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has expertise in the design and implementation of observational cohort studies and analysis of large administrative health databases. Dr. Samji’s main research interest is how synergistic epidemics, or “syndemics,” of illnesses like HIV, HCV, and mental illness and substance use disorder interact with contextual factors like poverty and early life trauma to create mutually reinforcing clusters of epidemics among populations, resulting in poorer access to healthcare and outcomes across the lifecourse.

Dr. Samji leads the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), an interdisciplinary study measuring predictors of positive youth well-being, mental health, and development in high school students. She is also the co-Principal Investigator of the BC Children’s Hospital Personal Impacts of COVID-19 Survey (PICS) study measuring the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Kids and COVID-19 project, funded by BC Children's Hospital Foundation, to develop recommendations to improve youth mental health and well-being during the pandemic recovery period.

She is working to articulate a “public mental health” system in BC that promotes positive mental health and well-being at the population level in addition to monitoring and addressing mental illness, as well as how public health can collaborate with the education system in supporting young people’s well-being.