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Biography

Dr. Samji received her doctorate in infectious disease epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she also completed her MSc. Subsequently, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship, awarded by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, at the BC Centre for Disease Control where she studied syndemics associated with HIV, hepatitis C virus, the overdose epidemic and population mental health. She currently holds a joint appointment at the BCCDC as a Senior Scientist in Population Mental Wellbeing in their Prevention and Health Promotion Division.

Dr. Samji leads the Capturing Health and Resilience Trajectories (CHART) Lab, an interdisciplinary team focused on identifying social and structural determinants of mental health and mobilizing research into action to promote social justice and youth mental wellbeing. She is the Principal Investigator of the Youth Development Instrument (YDI), a provincial study measuring predictors of positive youth wellbeing, mental health, and development among high school students, with youth engagement and collaborative design at its core. In her public health role, Dr. Samji is working to articulate a public mental health system in BC that promotes positive mental health and wellbeing at the population level in addition to monitoring and addressing mental illness. She also studies how public health and education systems can better intersect to support young people’s wellbeing. More information about the CHART lab is available at .

Dr. Samji is an Affiliate Investigator at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and an Affiliate Scholar at the Human Early Learning Partnership, University of British Columbia (HELP-UBC). She received a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Association for HIV Research in 2011, a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015, an 51ÉçÇøºÚÁÏFHS Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award in 2022, a CIHR Pandemic Preparedness and Health Emergencies Early Career Investigator Prize in 2022, and was inducted as a US National Academies of Science Frontiers of Science Kavli Fellow in 2023.

Teaching interests

I am interested in providing students with the necessary quantitative skills in epidemiology to operate in academic and applied public health environments. I am also interested in enhancing students’ understanding of public mental health systems, youth mental health and wellbeing, and collaboration between public health and education sectors.

Publications and activities

Visit Hasina Samji's publications .