Robert Hogg named as fellow to Royal Society of Canada

Robert Hogg, professor and associate dean of research in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Senior Research Fellow at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, is one of 11 SFU faculty members elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) for 2021. Attaining a fellowship in the RSC is Canada’s highest academic honour. 

As an internationally recognized expert in population health, he strives to understand the inequities in health among people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Hogg's work has directly improved the health of those living with HIV. 

“When I first started in this field, the life expectancy of people living with HIV was significantly less than other Canadians, but now because of better treatment, this gap is narrowing. By understanding the health inequities, I hope my research will continue to help to reduce this gap further and diminish other inequalities in life expectancy in this population”.

Hogg is currently working on the COAST study (Comparative Outcomes and Service Utilization Trends) which aims to understand the different patterns of aging between HIV positive persons and the general population in British Columbia. He and his team will be examining health records as well as engaging with community members and clinicians to get a sense of the spectrum of diseases currently impacting HIV positive persons, and how these co-morbidities might be best managed to improve health outcomes and quality of life.

Hogg credits his father, James Hogg, also an RSC fellow, with guiding his career and demonstrating the importance of interdisciplinary work to answering scientific questions.

Training in anthropology, demography, and epidemiology have shaped Hogg’s career. Work by his team engaging older adults living with HIV, care providers, and other researchers will help to better how to use health data to understand the health challenges in this HIV population.

Established in 1883 as Canada’s national academy, the RSC promotes research and learning in the arts, humanities and sciences.  Each year the RSC award fellowships to peer-elected and distinguished individuals who have made significant contributions in these fields.

Hogg is also a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.