PharmacoEpidemiology

James (Jim) Wright obtained his MD from the University of Alberta in 1968, his FRCP(C) in Internal Medicine in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from McGill University in 1976. He is a practicing specialist in Internal Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. He is also Co-Managing Director of the Therapeutics Initiative, Editor-in-Chief of the Therapeutics Letter and Coordinating Editor of the Cochrane Hypertension Review Group. 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, 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.

Barbara Mintzes is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Sydney, Australia, and an Affiliate Associate Professor with the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. She has worked with the Therapeutics Initiative’s Drug Assessment Working Group to carry out systematic reviews of the effectiveness and safety of new drugs since 1999, and was in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics and School of Population and Public Health at UBC until March 2015.

Dr Mintzes researches the effects of drug promotion, including direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines, on prescribing, medicine use and thresholds for disease diagnosis.  She co-authored the book, “Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals” with Ray Moynihan in 2010.

At the University of Sydney, she works with the Charles Perkins Centre, a multi-disciplinary research centre focusing on obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. She co-leads the Charles Perkins Centre’s Evidence Synthesis Node, and is a member of the Bias and Research Integrity Node. Dr Mintzes holds a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of British Columbia. She has also worked for many years with consumer and women’s health organizations, in Canada and internationally.

In 2014-2016, Barbara Mintzes was a paid expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs in two Canadian class action suits, on cardiovascular risks of testosterone treatment, and on hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer. She has no other conflicts to declare.

Colin Dormuth has 13 years of 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.

Alan Brookhart is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina in the Department of Epidemiology – UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. His research focuses on the development and application of statistical methods for drug utilization and outcomes research using large, health care claims data files. Areas of particular interest include the use of instrumental variable methods to assess short-term drug exposure effects, model selection strategies for efficient control of confounding, and multilevel analysis of prescription drug use data. He is also involved with the design and analysis of several cluster randomized trials. Dr. Brookhart received his PhD in Biostatistics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Conflict of Interest: Dr. Brookhart has received grant-funded support from Amgen for conducting research but no personal compensation or honoraria.

Greg Carney holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Victoria in applied economics. He has a unique skill set which combines business analysis, economics, statistical programming, and epidemiology. Since 1999 he has worked as an economist, business analyst, health researcher, statistician, and epidemiologist. His research focuses on post market pharmaceutical surveillance and pharmaceutical outcomes using large health care utilization databases.

Anat Fisher obtained her M.D. degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. She also has a Master of Health Administration from the Tel Aviv University in Israel. She worked as a family practitioner for many years and managed a Hospital Department in a Managed Health Organization. She is an experienced researcher and an expert in data analysis and trend analysis. She has conducted several systematic reviews on safety and efficacy of new drug therapies and is an author of Cochrane systematic reviews.

Yuko has recently joined the PharmacoEpidemiology Working Group as an Epidemiologist. Her primary research interest and training is to investigate the quality of prescription medication use, using the linked health administrative claims databases. She has conducted the investigation in relationship with pharmaceutical policy changes, physician prescribing behaviour, and health system characteristics. Her recent research focus is drug safety and post-market pharmaceutical surveillance. Yuko holds a PhD in Epidemiology from Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and occupational health at McGill University.

Tarita holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Information Science from the University of Victoria. She has recently joined the PharmacoEpidemiology Group, with previous experience as a research officer and data analyst in pharmaceutical policy and outcomes evaluation.

Richard Morrow holds an MA in Economics from the University of Victoria and a BA in English Literature from McGill University. His expertise includes policy analysis, communications, health economics, statistical methods and programming. Since 2004, he has worked as a research analyst in the areas of pharmaceutical policy and post-market drug safety and effectiveness.