UPHN Research Team

Dr. Cory Neudorf MD, FRCPC, MHSC

UPHN President

As co-founder of the Urban Public Health Network, Dr. Neudorf is known widely in public health spheres. He is Senior Medical Expert with the Public Health Agency of Canada, a liaison member with the Regions for Health Network (WHO Europe) and Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan. He is the former Senior Medical Health Officer of the Saskatchewan Health Authority and former Chief Medical Health Officer with the Saskatoon Health Region. He has held various leadership roles in Public Health at the national level in Canada, including:

• Chair of the Canadian Population Health Initiative Council,
• President of the Canadian Public Health Association and
• President of the Public Health Physicians of Canada.

His research interests include: intervention research to improve health equity; public health systems and services research; health status indicators and surveys; and integrating population health into health system performance improvement and strategic planning.

Dr. Thilina Bandara PHD, MPH

Scientific Lead 

Dr. Bandara is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan. His research interests include public health systems and services research, population health and One Health. He has been working with the UPHN membership on research projects since 2013 on topics including childhood immunizations, syphilis, HPV, public health system assessment and health inequality measurement. As a Scientific Lead for UPHN, he continues to conduct comparative qualitative and quantitative assessments on the public health issues that are important to the UPHN membership and represents the UPHN research team across the country in partnership with other public health research and practice organizations.

Yvonne Hanson, M.Ed, BA

Assistant Director 

Yvonne has an extensive background in providing leadership for NGO/nonprofit/community, research, and cooperative sectors throughout Canada. As UPHN’s Assistant Director, she supports and provides input to research management teams and assists with the governance and strategic planning for UPHN’s Executive and membership. Yvonne’s research interests include food (in)security/sovereignty, community capacity building, and gender-based+ analysis.

Mika Rathwell, MA, BA 

Project Lead

Mika Rathwell (BA, MA) is the Project Lead for the UPHN’s “Solutions to Increase Youth HPV Immunization in Canada” project, funded by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and a co-investigator on the CIHR funded “Assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on routine school-based immunizations and investigating strategies to catch-up on missed immunization opportunities in Canada” project. She holds a Masters in Anthropology from the University of Saskatchewan, where she collaborated with a local HIV/AIDS service organization to study how culture is operationalized in cultural safety strategies.

Aine Dolin, MA (Candidate), BA  

Project Officer

Aine holds a BA in anthropology from the University of Winnipeg and is completing an MA in medical anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan. Aine has worked for UPHN since 2021 and is the project officer for the Solutions to Increase Youth HPV Immunization in Canada project. Her areas of interest are sexual and reproductive health, policy analysis and implementation, and equity-based approaches to applied public health research.

James Dixon, PhD 

Project Lead

Dr. Dixon has an undergraduate degree in sociology and completed his doctorate in community and population health sciences in 2022, studying the political economy of the overdose crisis in Western Canada. James additionally works on other community-based substance use and related projects and chairs the Saskatoon Alliance on Substance Use.