Dr. Bonnie Henry appointed Deputy Provincial Health Officer of BC

Dr. Bonnie Henry, Associate Professor in the UBC School of Population of Public Health has been appointed Deputy Provincial Health Officer for the Province of British Columbia.

Dr. Bonnie Henry was the interim Provincial Executive Medical Director of the BC Centre for Disease Control from December 2013 until August 2014. She was also the Medical Director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control and Public Health Emergency Management with the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Medical Director for the provincial Emerging and Vector-borne Diseases program as well as a provincial program for surveillance and control of healthcare associated infections; a position she started in February of 2005.

Dr. Henry joined Toronto Public Health in September 2001 as Associate Medical Officer of Health where she was responsible for the Emergency Services Unit and the Communicable Disease Liaison Unit. In 2003 she was the operational lead in the response to the SARS outbreak in Toronto. She was a member of the executive team of the Ontario SARS Scientific Advisory Committee.

She is a specialist in Public Health and Preventive Medicine and is Board Certified in Preventive Medicine in the U.S. She graduated from Dalhousie Medical School and completed a Masters in Public Health in San Diego, residency training in preventive medicine at University of California, San Diego and in community medicine at University of Toronto.

Dr. Henry worked with the WHO/UNICEF Polio eradication program in Pakistan in 2000 and with the World Health Organization to control the Ebola outbreak in Uganda in 2001.

She is the past Chair of Immunize Canada and a member of the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the National Infection Control Guidelines Steering Committee. She chaired the Canadian Public Health Measures Task Group and was a member of the Infection Control Expert Group and the Canadian Pandemic Coordinating Committee responding to pandemic H1N1 (2009) influenza.

She has been involved with planning, surveillance and response to mass gatherings in Canada and internationally, including with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games. She is the author of “Soap and Water and Common Sense” a guide to staying healthy in a microbe filled world.