James R. Dunn (Jim) is a Scientist at MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and Professor and Chair of the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University. He is the Senator William McMaster Chair in Urban Health Equity and Director of the McMaster for Health Equity. He holds adjunct appointments at the University of Toronto (Geography and Planning) and the University of Waterloo (Planning) and in 2011-2012 was the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Chair in Canadian Studies at Harvard University. He has published widely in geography, public health, urban planning and epidemiology journals over his career and since he has been the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, a specialty journal of the British Medical Journal.
Trained in the Urban Geography of Health, Dr. Dunn has extensive experience in strategic analysis of urban planning and municipal policy in North American cities, as it pertains to creating the conditions for routine physical activity, and population health more generally. He has also examined the impacts of metropolitan governance and finance on the relationship between income inequality and population health in North American cities. Most recently, he was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Grant for the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC), a research hub focused on knowledge mobilization and both human and data capacity-building in housing research and policy.
His current research program focuses on the social determinants of health and the influence of economic and social policies, especially housing and urban policies, on inequalities in health and child development, concentrating on urban housing and neighbourhoods. Specifically, his work includes projects on the health and social impacts of public housing redevelopment, such as Toronto’s Regent Park, health and child development, the effects of housing improvement more generally on health and child development, and the development of place-based cross-sectoral (between public health and urban planning) policy implementation solutions for urban health problems.
Dr. Dunn has advised numerous policy-related organizations including municipalities in southern Ontario, the Provincial Health Officer for Ontario, the National Housing Research Committee of Canada and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. In addition, Dr. Dunn is Co-Executive Lead and Co-Founder of the Hamilton Anchor Institutions Leadership Council, which provides evidence-informed decision-making and strategic alignment leadership for the CEO-level leaders of Hamilton’s anchor institutions (hospitals, municipal government, police, school boards, universities and colleges, etc.) in the area of urban development and population health and well-being.
Please note: Dr. Dunn will not be taking any summer students
