Cochrane Hypertension

Dr. Ambasta is a general internist with a research focus on healthcare quality and patient safety. Having completed a medical degree and post-graduate training in general internal medicine at the University of Calgary, Dr. Ambasta pursued a Masters in Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with a focus on Clinical Effectiveness. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia. Her overall research program focuses on reduction of low-value services in health systems. She is a member of the Choosing Wisely Canada national expert group dedicated to reducing unnecessary laboratory testing. Her research work in low-value laboratory testing has been funded by Alberta Health Services, Choosing Wisely Alberta, Canadian Society of Internal Medicine, Alberta Health Services, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Her ongoing research projects include implementation of a multi-modal intervention bundle to reduce low-value laboratory testing across hospitals in Alberta and British Columbia, collaboration with a patient and family advisory council to engage patients with reduction of low-value use of health care resources and describing linkages between low value use of diagnostic testing and therapeutic use in healthcare systems.

Wade is a pharmacist and researcher working to ensure older persons are taking medications that are necessary, effective, safe, and consistent with their healthcare goals and treatment preferences. This primarily involves developing and evaluating strategies to stop medications when they are no longer a good fit (“deprescribing”). Wade approaches deprescribing and polypharmacy management research with a multi-methods approach, incorporating qualitative methods, pharmacoepidemiological methods, knowledge translation, and implementation science. He is also an investigator with the deprescribing.org initiative. Wade has worked clinically as a pharmacist in long-term care, geriatric outpatient clinics, and primary care clinics.

Ciprian Jauca studied linguistics at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (major in Romance Languages, minor in Germanistic Studies) from 1986 to 1990. In 1991 he earned an International Diploma of Business Management and Intercultural Communication from the University of Osnabruck, Germany. He speaks several languages and has worked as translator and simultaneous interpreter, as well as managing social development projects for non-profit organizations. Ciprian joined the Therapeutics Initiative at its inception in 1994. He is the Managing Editor for the Therapeutics Letter and has been the Program Coordinator for the Therapeutics Initiative from its inception in 1994 until 2018. He created the Therapeutics Initiative website in the late 1990s and has been serving as its webmaster. He has been involved in the international Cochrane Collaboration since 2001, serving as the Managing Editor for Cochrane Hypertension. He has been involved in the International Society of Drug Bulletins since 2003, was elected as a member of the Executive Committee in 2008 and was elected Secretary General of the organization in 2016. Ciprian served as an elected member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff (AAPS) at the University of British Columbia from 2011 to 2015. Ciprian is currently serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Laurier Institution, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of Colibri Learning Foundation and Vice-Chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’í Community of Canada.

Balraj (Benji) Heran received a B.Sc. (Hon.) in Physiology at the UBC and joined the TI in 2000. He recently graduated from the Ph.D. program in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, UBC. Under the supervision of Dr. Jim Wright, he conducted two systematic reviews of the dose-related blood pressure lowering efficacy of ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers for primary hypertension. Benji is also a contributing author of a number of systematic reviews and protocols published in the Cochrane Library. From 2003 to 2009 he has served on the editorial team of the Cochrane Collaboration Hypertension Review Group as the Trial Search Co-ordinator, since 2009 has been an Editor with the Cochrane Hypertension Group and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Cochrane Heart Group. He has a keen interest in cardiovascular research.

Dr. Nima Alaeiilkhchi joined the TI in March 2024 as a postdoctoral fellow following the completion of his PhD in Neuroscience. His doctoral research was dedicated to exploring metabolic treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS) using murine models. This work reflects his passion for deepening his understanding of complex biological systems and his ambition to bridge the gap between laboratory research and clinical application as a future clinician-scientist. Moreover, with nearly a decade of experience working with the Cochrane Hypertension Group, Nima has developed a robust expertise in conducting systematic reviews.

Nima will collaborate with Dr. Wade Thompson and Dr. Anshula Ambasta, focusing on systematic reviews and evidence synthesis in the realm of deprescribing and the management of polypharmacy, particularly among older populations. His work under Dr. Thompson’s guidance involves employing a multi-methods approach to research, aiming to optimize medication use in alignment with patients’ healthcare goals and preferences. Concurrently, with Dr. Ambasta, he will contribute to qualitative research efforts targeted at enhancing healthcare quality and patient safety, with a keen interest in the reduction of low-value services. This collaborative work not only aligns with his passion for translating research into actionable clinical practices but also marks a significant step in his journey toward impactful translational research and clinician-scientist excellence.

Dr. Grenet completed his MD specializing in endocrinology and his PhD in clinical pharmacology at the University of Lyon 1. He is a hospital doctor at the pharmaco-toxicology department of the University Hospital of Lyon, and a member of the Evaluation and Modeling with the Therapeutic Effects Group at the Laboratory of Biometry and Evolutionary Biology, CNRS UMR 5558 Lyon 1. His research focuses on treatment evaluation, especially of drugs used in diabetes, metabolic diseases and cardiovascular risk factors, mostly using meta-analytical approaches.

As a one-year Visiting Scientist, Dr. Grenet has joined the Therapeutics Initiative team to collaborate notably with the Drug Assessment Working Group and the Cochrane Hypertension Group. He will pursue the INDANA project of individual participants data meta-analysis in high blood pressure, initiated by Prof. Francois Gueyffier. In the context of the growing overweight and obesity pandemic, he will assess the impact of the body mass index on the cardiovascular benefits of antihypertensive drugs. The results are expected to help personalizing evidence-based treatment of people affected by overweight or obesity and high blood pressure.

Dr. Carole Lunny is a Senior Research Scientist, HEOR division of Precision AQ and affiliated with the Cochrane Hypertension Group, Therapeutics Initiative at the University of British Columbia. Dr Lunny completed her PhD training as a clinical epidemiologist and methodologist at Cochrane Australia in January 2019 from Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. Dr Lunny specialises in methods for research synthesis and critical appraisal of systematic reviews, network meta-analyses, randomised controlled trials, overviews of reviews, and observational studies. She routinely tells people she is an expert in identifying bias and error in clinical research studies. Dr Lunny’s current academic research is focused on further testing of the the RoB NMA tool, methods for ‘overviews of reviews’, and an AI tool to automate the methodological quality and risk of bias at the systematic review-level called “WISEST AI”. You can access her publication at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=lunny+c&sort=date

Marco Perez obtained his MD degree at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1991. He completed his specialty in Intensive Care Medicine in 1996. He worked as practicing specialist in an intensive care unit for several years. He obtained his PhD in Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia in 2010, specializing in hypertension and hypertensive emergencies. During his PhD, he conducted two Cochrane systematic reviews and a randomized controlled trial. He has also been a contributing author of a number of systematic reviews published in the Cochrane Library and other peer-reviewed medical journals. Since 2006 he has served on the editorial team of Cochrane Hypertension. He has also been actively involved with the Therapeutics Initiative in the drug assessment-working group, since 2003; and as a clinical reviewer with the Common Drug Review, since 2007. He has completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institut de la Sante et Recherche Medicale (INSERM) in the Université de Lyon, France, working in an international (French/Canadian) hypertension research project.

Douglas M Salzwedel obtained a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario in 2001 and has worked as the Information Specialist for the Therapeutics Initiative and Cochrane Hypertension since June 2009.  In addition to information retrieval projects, he leads Cochrane Hypertension’s priority setting activities, and is a member of the Drug Assessment Working Group and the Communications and Outreach Group.

During his time with the TI, Douglas served on the Cochrane Information Specialists’ Executive from 2011 to 2017 and from 2015 to 2018 he provided induction training, software training, mentoring and ongoing support to Cochrane Information Specialists across Cochrane’s international network as a member of Cochrane’s Information Specialists’ Support Team.  He re-joined the Cochrane Information Specialists’ Executive in 2023 and is also a Co-Convenor of PRESSforum, a search peer review portal for health sciences librarians engaged in systematic review searching

Prior to joining the Therapeutics Initiative, Douglas was the information specialist for the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Review Group and a librarian at the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Population Health.

Colin Dormuth has extensive experience using administrative health care databases to evaluate pharmaceutical policy changes and physician prescribing behaviour. He has been a member of the Therapeutics Initiative since 1995. His research focuses on drug safety and effectiveness, as well as the design and evaluation of reimbursement policies for prescription drugs. He has training in economic theory, applied econometrics, epidemiology, health services outcome research and biostatistics. Dr. Dormuth holds a Sc.D. and S.M. in epidemiology from Harvard University, an M.A. in economics from the University of Victoria, and a B.A. in economics from the University of Manitoba.

Ken Bassett conducts systematic reviews of the efficacy and safety of new and established drugs, as well as pharmaco-epidemiologic studies of serious adverse events associated with prescription drug therapy in British Columbia. His ongoing research interests are in the systematic review of drug therapy and drug funding policy.

James (Jim) Wright obtained his MD from the University of Alberta in 1968, his FRCP(C) in Internal Medicine in 1975 and his PhD in Pharmacology from McGill University in 1976. He worked as a specialist in Internal Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology from 1997-2021. He served as the Co-Managing Director of the Therapeutics Initiative and Editor-in-Chief of the Therapeutics Letter from 1994-2020. He currently sits on the Editorial Boards of PLoSOne and the Cochrane Library.
Dr. Wright’s research focuses on issues related to appropriate use of prescription drugs (particularly antihypertensive and lipid lowering drugs), Clinical Pharmacology, clinical trials, systematic review, meta-analysis and knowledge translation.