SPEAKERS

Peter Smith

Peter Smith is the President and a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto. He also holds a status only position as professor in the epidemiology division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He has broad interests in work as a social determinant of health, the measurement of work exposures in particular those associated with the psychosocial work environment, and methodological approaches to better understand the potential impacts of interventions focused on the work environment to reduce health inequalities.

Alexandra Lecours

Alexandra Lecours is a professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, where she also holds the UQTR Research Chair on the Health of Aging Workers. Her research focuses on promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in the workplace to support the healthy and active participation of aging employees. Prof. Lecours is dedicated to identifying and implementing strategies that help retain aging workers and facilitate their safe and healthy return to work following periods of disability. Her work is instrumental in advancing occupational health practices and policies that benefit both employees and employers.

Sara Dorow

Sara Dorow is Professor of Sociology and Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology at the University of Alberta. Her research is in the areas of work, family, gender, and migration/mobility, and has included multiple research projects in the oil sands between 2007 and 2019.

Quentin Durand-Moreau

Quentin Durand-Moreau, MD, MEd, is an Assistant Professor in the division of Preventive Medicine, Director of Post-Graduate Occupational Medicine programs (Subspecialty residency, Enhanced Skills, and Fellowship) at the University of Alberta. He practices as an Occupational Medicine Specialist at the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic (Kaye Edmonton Clinic). He is currently a board member of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) and a member of the Council on Occupational and Environmental Medicine Science of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) and the French Society for Occupational Health (Société Française de Santé au Travail, SFST). His topics of interest and research include work-related mental health issues, Covid work-related issues, and medical education. He has provided expert opinions in national and international work groups on burnout and compensation of work-related mental health diseases. He has been awarded the 2024 ACOEM executive committee outstanding achievement award. 

Resident/Trainee Presentations

Occupational Asthma in Ontario, Canada (2000-2022): A Retrospective, Clinic-based Study Evaluating Sex Differences

Felix Chan

Dr. Felix Chan is a PGY-4 resident physician in Clinical Immunology and Allergy at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Occupational Skin and Lung Diseases at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. His academic interests are occupational allergy and asthma and drug hypersensitivity, having published articles in JACI: In Practice, The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Occupational Medicine, and Clinical & Experimental Allergy. Dr. Chan aspires to pursue a future career as an academic allergist and immunologist with expertise in occupational patch testing and airway disease.

Artificial Intelligence in Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Manu Saraswat

Manu Saraswat is a resident training in Occupational Medicine at the University of Alberta with prior certification in Family Medicine and Public Health & Preventive Medicine. He received his medical degree at Dalhousie University and public health Master's degree at Johns Hopkins.

Alimentary Arsenic – A Case Report

Pier-Alexandre Vasil

Pier-Alexandre Vasil is currently undertaking a residency in occupational and environmental medicine at the Université de Montréal.

He earned his medical degree at the Université de Sherbrooke, followed by a specialization in public health and preventive medicine at the Université de Montréal.

Panel Discussion: Foundations Course in Occupational Medicine

Sebastian Straube

Dr. Sebastian Straube holds degrees in Medicine and Physiological Sciences from the University of Oxford where he also did his DPhil (PhD). After clinical work and research at the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, Dr. Straube joined the University Medical Center Göttingen (Germany). There he completed his Habilitation (German postdoctoral qualification) and his postgraduate medical training in Occupational Medicine. Dr. Straube took up his current post in the Division of Preventive Medicine of the University of Alberta's Department of Medicine in 2014. He was appointed as Division Director for Preventive Medicine in 2016 and promoted to Full Professor in 2019.

Fisayo Ojo

I am a Family Physician with training in Public Health and Occupational Health.

Niels Koehncke

Dr. Koehncke is a specialist in occupational medicine and Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. He is a faculty member and former director of the Canadian Centre for Rural and Agricultural Health at the U of S. He runs an occupational medicine consultation clinic in Saskatoon and is actively engaged in teaching graduate and undergraduate medical, public health, and toxicology students and residents. He also tutors in the Foundations Course in Occupational Medicine. He previously served as the Chief Occupational Medical Officer with the Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety for 20 years. His current areas of research are agricultural injury surveillance and veterinary occupational health.

Sidney Siu

Dr. Siu is actually a Professional Engineer in chemical engineering. He is also a Specialist in Occupational Medicine on both sides of the border. He is a Certified Toxicologist by the American Board of Toxicology and a Certified Industrial Hygienist, which qualifies him to assess occupational exposures. He was the medical consultant at the Ministry of Labour for 13 years and now provides consultations and expert opinions to industry, workers, law enforcement agencies, compensation boards, universities, hospitals, and lawyers. In the 1980s, he participated in an extensive study on latex allergy and the health care workers. He served as the chair of the Occupational Health Section of the OMA (2002-2004), during which time, he was heavily involved with pandemic planning. He later advocated for the use of quadrivalent influenza vaccine for the healthcare workers, when only the trivalent was the publicly funded. He was the president of the OEMAC from 2014-2015. He has been involved with the planning committee in most of the “Day in Occupational Medicine” at the Ontario Medical Association. He is currently a member of the Biological Aerosols Working Group (BAWG) for the Canadian Standards Association for the Respirator Selection Guidelines. He is an adjunct professor at Western University and a tutor for the Foundation Course in Occupational Medicine at the University of Alberta. In his free time, he acts as a Coroner for the Province of Ontario, providing a “full health care service.” His passion is photography, and his phototherapy trumps everything!