Steering Committee

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 is a practicing specialist in Internal Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Therapeutics Letter. He sits on the Editorial Boards of PLoS One 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.

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.

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.

Dr. Tom Perry graduated from McGill University Medical School in 1978. He achieved Fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, and took additional training at the Karolinska Institute Department of Clinical Pharmacology in Stockholm in 1986 and at UBC until 1989, when he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.  He served as Opposition Health Critic from 1989-1991, as Minister for Advanced Education, Training & Technology from 1991-93, and as a government MLA from 1993-96.  These experiences alerted him to the importance of getting good value for money in health care, in order to maintain an effective universal health service in Canada.

After returning to clinical medicine in 1996 Tom practiced general internal medicine with sick patients at Delta Hospital, UBC Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital until 2014. He now teaches clinical pharmacology through seminars, lectures and elective student clinical training at UBCH. His outpatient practice focuses on pharmacological treatment of chronic pain and high blood pressure and reduction of pointless or dangerous polypharmacy. He has a special interest in the use of videography to teach students and doctors about drugs and about human pathophysiology.

Tom co-chairs our Education Working Group and since November 2019 is Editor of the Therapeutics Letter. His other interests include wilderness canoeing and hiking, environmental conservation, peace and social justice issues, music, reading, and his wife (an experienced RN) and two children. He likes continuous thinking and learning about medicine and drug therapy, and especially our interactions with smart and dedicated health care colleagues (students, MDs, pharmacists, NPs, nurses, PAs, pharmacy technicians, and others) throughout B.C. and around the world.

Alan Cassels has decades of experience researching and writing on pharmaceuticals, particularly drug benefits policies, and the politics of pharmaceutical research, marketing, and coverage.  His main specialties are documenting the gap between marketing and science in the pharmaceutical and medical screening industries, and trying to improve the quality of medical reporting. His journalism aims to take high quality evidence-based medical information and make it simple and understandable for consumers.

Alan has written an international bestseller on the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the creation and marketing of illness, Selling Sickness, with Ray Moynihan (Greystone, 2005), an illustrated poetry book on disease mongering, The ABCs of Disease Mongering:  An Epidemic in 26 Letters (EmDash, 2007) and a book on medical screening (Seeking Sickness:  Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease (Greystone, 2012). His latest book is The Cochrane Collaboration: Medicine’s Best Kept Secret, (Agio, 2015).

Greg Carney completed his doctorate in Pharmacology and Therapeutics, with a focus on pharmacoepidemiology at the University of British Columbia. His PhD thesis examined the comparative safety and effectiveness of medications commonly used to aid smoking cessation. Greg has worked for the Therapeutics Initiative since 2003, and is currently Co-Chair of the PharmacoEpidemiology Group (PEG). Greg has 20 years of experience in analysing health care databases to evaluate pharmaceutical policy and program changes, and in conducting drug safety and effectiveness studies. His current research focus is on the implementation and evaluation of physician audit and feedback programs using randomized designed delay trials.

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. He 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.

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.

Originally from Montreal, Patrick studied pharmacology and obtained both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from McGill University. He took on several business development and management roles in the corporate world before dedicating his career to non-profit health research for advancement of medical sciences and the greater good. Prior to joining the Therapeutics Initiative, he was managing the extensive research portfolio of the cancer centre at Purdue University ranging from fundamental research to clinical trials. As the TI general manager, Patrick oversees daily operations, safeguards financial health, and provides strategic support to the working groups. What he appreciates the most working with the TI is its non-biased policy, openness to the world, and relentless pursuit of clinical evidence for drug therapy.