Benita Hosseini

Dr. Banafshe (Benita) Hosseini is a Research Scientist at the Upstream Lab, MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the Upstream lab, she completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Montreal, where she contributed to several projects addressing the impact of dietary intervention on respiratory illnesses in children and adults.

Her research focuses on pandemic preparedness, incorporating adaptive platform trials to evaluate treatments for respiratory infections, implementing diagnostic tools to enhance early detection and monitoring, and applying the One Health approach to address the interconnected challenges across human, animal, and ecosystem health. The multifaceted exploration includes dietary interventions, application of diagnostic tools, and use of AI solutions. Benita’s work also explores the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to predict health outcomes, improve healthcare system efficiency, and inform early warning systems for respiratory infections. She is committed to advancing health equity and understanding the role of social determinants of health (SDoH) in shaping health outcomes. Her research examines how individual and neighborhood-level factors contribute to health inequities and works to address barriers to care, particularly for vulnerable populations. Dr. Hosseini is particularly interested in translating these findings into actionable strategies to enhance respiratory health, especially within vulnerable populations. Currently, Dr. Hosseini is mainly working within the CanTreatCOVID research group. She has been directly involved in the rapid roll-out of the CanTreatCOVID study, which is a nationwide adaptive platform trial designed to identify effective and affordable treatments for COVID-19 so they can be made readily available in community settings.

Other Appointments & Affiliations

• Upstream Lab, MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto
• Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto