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Kanna Hayashi

Associate Professor, St. Paul's Hospital Chair in Substance Use Research MSHRBC Scholar

Health Sciences

Kanna Hayashi

Associate Professor, St. Paul's Hospital Chair in Substance Use Research, MSHRBC Scholar

Health Sciences

Areas of interest

Epidemiology, community-based research, public health and human rights, substance use, and health services for drug-using populations

Education

  • BA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
  • MIA & MPH, Columbia University
  • PhD, University of British Columbia

Biography

Dr. Kanna Hayashi joined the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU in September 2016. Dr. Hayashi completed two Master’s degrees in International Affairs and Public Health and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She is also a Research Scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use. She has won a number of prestigious academic awards, including the Royal Society of Canada’s Alice Wilson Award and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award. At the 2016 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Scientific Consultation on HIV and drugs, she served as the group lead on the role of ARVs in HIV prevention, treatment and care among people who use drugs and co-drafted the Scientific Statement “Science addressing drugs and HIV: State of the Art,” which was presented at the 59th Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs.

Research interests

Dr. Hayashi’s primary research interests and expertise include social and clinical epidemiology of substance use, community-based research, harm reduction, substance use care, and equity-promoting approaches to drug policy and programming. She leads the Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study (VIDUS), one of the largest and longest-running prospective cohort studies of community-recruited people who use drugs in the world. She has also been co-leading several community-based participatory action-oriented research projects with collaborators including the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, Pivot Legal Society and Mitsampan Harm Reduction Center/Thai AIDS Treatment Action Group (Thailand).

Teaching interests

Dr. Hayashi’s teaching interests are in the area of substance use epidemiology, social epidemiology, community-based research, drug policy, and health services research focusing on substance use.

Courses

Future courses may be subject to change.

Publications and activities

View Dr. Hayashi's publications here.