Healthy Cities in the SDG Era

A projected 5 billion people, or 60% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030, which makes urban health a matter of global health. In September 2015, Canada and 192 fellow countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a global framework for action for people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. It outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the SDGs, all with a guiding principle of leaving no one behind. We have ten years to meet these goals, and there are a number of areas where Canada is lagging behind, and in some cases, moving backwards.This is Healthy Cities in the SDG Era, a podcast about the SDGs, and how research conducted by faculty and students at the University of Toronto is helping to achieve them. This podcast will explore research and policy topics related to SDG3: Good Health and Well-being, and SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, and the ways in which they intersect with the other SDGs - for example, areas like poverty, hunger, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequalities, and climate action. Our goal is to give context to the ongoing research and progress towards achieving the SDGs at U of T, as it relates to Canada’s actions, and to add new perspectives to national discussions about the SDGs. Our conversations will be evidence-based and focus on highlighting actionable ways that people can make an impact in achieving the SDGs. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

In September 2015, Canada and 192 other countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a global framework that is described as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” In the first episode of Healthy Cities in the SDG Era, Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero will speak to two experts who are working towards achieving these goals about what the SDGs are, why they matter to Canada, and how work at the University of Toronto is helping to achieve them.  Margaret Biggs is Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy at Queen’s University, Chairperson of the Board of Governors for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and Vice Chair of the Canadian Partnership on Women’s and Children’s Health (CanWaCH). Ms. Biggs previously served as President of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and was responsible for overseeing Canada’s international development and humanitarian assistance efforts worldwide, including Canada’s G8 Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. She is an active contributor on issues related to Canada and global sustainable development. In 2018 she co-authored “A Canadian North Star: Crafting an advanced economy approach to the Sustainable Development Goals” at the Brookings Institution. Ms. Biggs is Board Chair of World University Services Canada and member of the Advisory Council for FinDevCanada. Dr. Joseph Wong is the Vice-President, International for the University of Toronto. He is the Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He formerly held the Canada Research Chair in health, development and democracy for two terms. His research focuses on poverty and innovation, and he has an extensive background of working with the World Bank and the United Nations, and has advised governments around the world on matters of public policy.CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being, holds as its objective, ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages. Its targets encompass a broad range of areas, from improving maternal and child health outcomes, reducing premature death from non-communicable diseases and promoting mental health and well-being, to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services.SDG 3 is one of the two foundational SDGs of our series, alongside SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. Throughout the series, we’ll explore the ways that these SDGs intersect with other goals, including gender equality, education, reducing inequalities, zero hunger, and climate action. This episode will feature both global and Canadian perspectives on how we can address SDG3, from community interventions to system-level approaches. Sujata Mishra is a PhD candidate in Health Economics, at the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto. She is a student in the Collaborative Specialization in Global Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on community health workers in India called Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHAs in India, and their role in reducing maternal and child mortality and improving their health outcomes.Dr. Sara Allin is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She is the Director of Operations at the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Dr. Allin also works as a Senior Researcher with the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Her research focuses on improving health system performance in Canada and other high-income countries.CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, focuses on making cities and settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. This is significant, as currently half of the global population, or 3.5 billion people, live in cities today, and a projected 5 billion people, or 60% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030. SDG 11 is one of the two foundational SDGs of Healthy Cities in the SDG Era, alongside SDG3: Good Health and Wellbeing. Throughout the series, we’ll explore the ways that these SDGs intersect with other goals, including gender equality, education, reducing inequalities, zero hunger, and climate action.  Dr. Patricia O’Campo is the Interim Executive Director of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, a Scientist at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, and Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.  She holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Population Health Intervention Research and has an established program of research focused on policies and health, and how urban and social policies can ensure people are healthy.Garrett Morgan is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto working under the co-supervision of Dr. Blake Poland at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Dr. John Robinson at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Garrett is also a student in the Collaborative Specializations in Global Health and Environment and Health, at U of T. He is an urban planner and sustainable development consultant with professional experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors in rural, suburban, and urban environments in Canada and the United States. His research explores the relationships between resilience, sustainability, and equity in Toronto’s marginalized communities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities,  focuses on reducing inequality within and among countries. There is a stark wealth gap between the richest and poorest in Canada. According to a 2020 report from the Parliamentary Budget Office, the wealthiest 0.01% percent of Canadian families have a net wealth of $654 billion, which is 5.6% of the national total. The poorest 40% of Canadian families, on the other hand, have a net wealth of $132 billion, or, 1.1% of the national total. This gap has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic – the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported that Canada’s top 20 billionaries have become $37 billion richer during the COVID-19 pandemic, earning an average of $2 billion each. This has happened alongside significant job losses amongst the working class.Toronto has one of the highest costs of living of cities in Canada. The cost of housing, food, transit, childcare, and postsecondary tuition have increased significantly over the past three decades, while incomes have stagnated. The impacts of this drastic increase in the cost of living have had unequal impacts. Racialized groups, recent immigrants/migrants, and young people living in Toronto have become poorer over time, as these groups have not experienced income increases over the past 35 years. While income inequality is an important metric to consider when thinking about inequality, it is not the only one. In this episode, our guests approach the goal of Reducing Inequality from a more critical lens.  Dr. Roberta Timothy is an Assistant Professor in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences Division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, at the University of Toronto. Roberta is also co-founder and consultant at Continuing Healing Consultants, where she implements and teaches her intersectional mental health model “Anti Oppression Psychotherapy”. She specializes in the areas of intersectionality, critical human rights, and health ethics; health and race; transnational Indigenous health; and anti-oppression/anti-colonial approaches to mental health (including anti-oppression psychotherapy) and research methodology. Amrita Kumar-Ratta is a third year PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. She is a student in the Collaborative Specialization in Global Health and South Asian Studies at U of T. Amrita’s research focuses on gendered and ethnoracial constructions of inequality, particularly on the geopolitics of marriage and fertility in Punjabi communities in Canada. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.

Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality, aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Its targets encompass ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere; eliminating violence against women and girls; recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work; ensuring women’s participation and equal opportunities for political, economic, and public leadership; and ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.   While the scope of inequality that SDG5 seeks to address is wide-ranging, there is a glaring omission in the very description of SDG 5: while it aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, it fails to explicitly acknowledge the inequities that gender-diverse individuals and sexual minorities experience on the basis of their social identities. Further, it does not explicitly acknowledge intersectionality, and how sexism interacts and intersects with other forms of oppression like racism, homophobia, and classism, to produce different lived experiences of inequality. In this episode of Healthy Cities in the SDG Era, Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero speaks with two researchers that are working to improve the health and well-being of women and gender-diverse individuals with equity and intersectionality at the forefront. Dr. Lori Ross is an Associate Professor in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences Division of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Lori is also the leader of the Re:searching for LGBTQ Health Team. Lori uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches in her research work, with a strong focus on integrating the principles of community-based research. Much of her research focuses on understanding the mental health and service needs of marginalized populations including lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S+) people, in order to improve access to services for these communities.Sireesha Bobbili is a PhD candidate in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, U of T. She formerly worked as a Project Manager at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, where she led projects focusing on improving mental health systems, both locally and abroad, to increase access for vulnerable and marginalized populations. Sireesha conducts global health research regarding mental health and substance use, violence against women, and public health policy. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

This episode of Healthy Cities in the SDG Era takes a different approach in thinking about the Sustainable Development Goals, by zooming out from a focus on specific SDGs, to talking about global health diplomacy, a process which is linked to many of the Goals.Professor Ilona Kickbusch is the founder and chair of the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. Previously, she served as the head of the global health division of Yale University and held various positions at the World Health Organization. In 2016, Prof. Kickbusch was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of her significant contributions to shaping the field of global health with her practical and theoretical expertise. Currently, she is undertaking responsibilities in several distinguished boards and commissions such as the Lancet FT Commission Governing Health Futures – Growing up in a digital world, UHC 2030 and Global Preparedness Monitoring Board.Dr. Srikanth Kondreddy is an Investigator at the Bruyère Research Institute, University of Ottawa, and a Senior Fellow at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Knowledge Translation and Health Technology Assessment in Health Equity, Ottawa. He also works with UN agencies and he contributes to Think 20 (T20), a policy engagement group of the G20, and has contributed to projects such as the T20 Task Force on "COVID-19 - Multidisciplinary Approaches to Complex Problems". He has research and teaching interests in global health policy, governance, and diplomacy. He is currently researching on global health governance, pandemic preparedness and response, global health security, international health regulations, and international cooperation in health.CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. In this episode of Healthy Cities in the SDG Era, Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero will speak with two experts about the relationship between poverty and hunger, or insecure access to food, within both Canadian and global contexts. Discussions will also focus on underlying issues of systemic racism and social inequities, that lead to a disproportionate prevalence of hunger and food security amongst different social groups. Dr. Valerie Tarasuk is a Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, cross-appointed to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her primary research focus is household food insecurity. She has led several tri-council research grants to elucidate the scope, nature, and health implications of this problem in Canada, assess the effectiveness of community responses, and determine how public policies and programs impact food insecurity prevalence and severity. In 2011, she led the establishment of PROOF, an interdisciplinary research program working to identify effective policy approaches and mobilize knowledge to reduce household food insecurity in Canada. Allison Daniel is a PhD Candidate in Nutritional Sciences (in the Faculty of Medicine) and a student in the Collaborative Specialization in Global Health. Her research focuses on children with severe acute malnutrition requiring inpatient admission in Blantyre, Malawi. More specifically, she is interested in the pathways from maternal factors and care practices to child outcomes including development and nutritional status in severely malnourished children. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

Sustainable Development Goal 1:  No Poverty, focuses on ending poverty, in all of its forms, everywhere.Lincoln Lau, currently based in Manila, Philippines received his PhD in infectious disease epidemiology from the University of Hong Kong. He then started working with International Care Ministries in 2013 and has led the development of their research capacity and projects. His work covers a wide variety of topics including public health, development economics, faith-based programs, social networks, and early-childhood education. He is concurrently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo and an Assistant Professor (Status Only) at Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.James White RN, MSc, PhDc is the Director of the Infectious Diseases and Global Health Security Center at Abt Associates where he leads and support numerous global projects focused on epidemic preparedness, emergency response, health system strengthening, and health systems resilience.  He is a registered nurse with nearly 20 years experience supporting global communities in addressing critical issues such as infectious disease prevention and treatment, maternal and child health, emergency response, and social welfare in resource-constrained environments.  James is also a current PhD candidate in Nursing and Public Health at the University of Toronto where he is in the final stages of conducting a study focused on diagnostic assessment of states of impoverishment.  His research, aims to develop a diagnostic measure of poverty that can help clinicians infuse an understanding of political economy and critical social theory into everyday clinical practice.CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. 

SDG 4: Quality Education, focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.Content warning for listeners: This episode contains discussions on residential schools in the following sections:2:38-3:10 16:01 – 16:25 20:15 – 20:35 30:19 – 31:31Dr. Angela Mashford-Pringle is an Algonquin (Timiskaming First Nation) Assistant Professor and Associate Director at the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health, Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Mashford-Pringle worked for over a decade at the federal government in Indigenous initiatives. Angela is the Director of the Master of Public Health – Indigenous Health program (MPH-IH), Director of the Collaborative Specialization in Indigenous Health (CSIH) and Founding Editor of the Turtle Island Journal on Indigenous Health (TIJIH). As the only Canadian and first Indigenous board member at the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH), she has been finding ways to connect Canadian community organizations to university researchers in Canada. She works with Indigenous communities in urban and rural settings with issues related to Indigenous health including culture and cultural safety, language, land-based learning, climate action, and policy analysis and development. Hopi Martin is a PhD candidate in Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at University of Toronto.  His research focus has been to bring forward an Ojibwe Seasonal Pedagogy to the 'edge of the bush' between Ojibwe Knowledge of Early Childhood Education and the current colonial pedagogies that dominate research, policy, and practice. Learn more about Edge of the Bush.Mental Health and Wellness Resources:Hope for Wellness HelplineCrisis Services CanadaCMHA Mental Health and Wellness Services for Indigenous Children and Youth Kids Help PhoneEducation Resources:National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation websiteTRC WebsiteNatural Curiosity: The Importance of Indigenous Perspectives in Children's Environmental Inquiry CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

Sustainable Development Goal 13: Climate Action, focuses on taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.Dr. Paula Braitstein is an epidemiologist living and working in Kenya since 2007. Most of her research has been oriented around major health and social issues in East Africa including HIV prevention, treatment, and the cascade of HIV care, and high risk children and youth including those who have been orphaned (from HIV and other causes), separated, abandoned, and those who are street-connected. Dr. Braitstein is a CIHR Chair of Applied Public Health Research, and won the 2017 CIHR Institute of Public and Population Health Mid-Career Trail Blazer Award for her work with street-connected and homeless youth in East Africa. In addition to doing her own research, Paula is Co-Field Director of Research for the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) Consortium in which the University of Toronto (Faculty of Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health) is a partner. Dr. Braitstein is a passionate environmentalist in Kenya and leads a graduate seminar course on planetary health for the DLSPH and Moi University, School of Public Health (Kenya). Victoria Haldane is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, she is also a student in the collaborative specialization in global health at the DLSPH. She is co-founder of Emerging Leaders for Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare (ELESH) and a junior fellow with the Centre for Sustainable Health Systems. Her research interests include implementation science to improve quality of care, health systems resilience, and making our health systems better for people and the planet. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

SDG 15: Life on Land, focuses on sustainable management of forests, combatting desertification, halting and reversing land degradation, and halting biodiversity loss. In this episode, Ophelia Michaelides speaks to two researchers that are working towards improving our understanding of zoonotic diseases, or, diseases transmitted between animals and humans. Discussions focus on unpacking what zoonotic diseases are; how social and environmental factors impact their spread; and the actions we can take at individual, national, and global scales to develop more sustainable prevention and mitigation strategies for managing zoonotic disease emergence. Dr. Samira Mubareka is a virologist, medical microbiologist and infectious disease physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto.  Samira has been working on SARS-CoV-2 since the outset of the pandemic in North America with a focus on virus biology, bioaerosols and exposure, genomics and diagnostics through close and cross-disciplinary collaborations across engineering, computational biology, molecular virology and animal health. Samira serves on the Chief Science Advisor of Canada, Dr. M. Nemer’s COVID-19 Expert Panel, the Implementation Committee of the Genome Canada-led Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) VirusSeq project, and the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.  She is currently focused on understanding the biology and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and on coronavirus zoonotic spillover. Samira holds an MD from Dalhousie University, completed training in Internal Medicine at McGill University, and specialized in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology at the University of Manitoba. Isha Berry is a PhD Candidate in Epidemiology at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is also a Fellow in the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security. Isha has expertise in infectious disease epidemiology and mathematical modelling and has experience conducting infectious disease research in low-, middle-, and high-income settings. Her primary area of research is understanding the socio-behavioral drivers of global emerging infectious diseases at the human-animal interface. She holds an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BSc in Environmental Science from McGill University.CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, focuses on ensuring access to water and sanitation for all.Professor David Meyer completed his PhD and M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and is an alumnus of Engineering Science (Energy Option) at U of T. Before his graduate studies, David worked for Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) in Ghana and for a engineering consulting firm called HydraTek in Toronto. His research focuses on urban water distribution infrastructure, and specifically how this infrastructure behaves in Mega Cities in the Global South. His research group works on projects including new ways of managing and modelling megacity water networks, especially when they turn on and off frequently. These intermittent systems affect one billion people! He also runs the Sensing Health In Toilets Lab (an acronym he is proud of) where they try to measure the health of a community from within its toilets. Samantha LeValley is a first-year PhD Student in Civil Engineering in the Centre for Global Engineering at UofT. She completed her MASc in Civil Engineering at UofT in 2021 along with the Collaborative Specialization in Global Health. The goal of her PhD research is to understand how equitable current improved rural water supplies are and how that equity changes with seasonality and compares between two different contexts in the Global South.CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

Sustainable Development Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, focuses on promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. Professor Ito Peng is a Canada Research Chair in Global Social Policy at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto. Her research and teaching focuses on gender, migration and care policies, and comparative welfare states. She has written extensively on social policies and political economy of care in Asia Pacific, often in comparison with North America and Europe. She just completed a SSHRC funded international partnership research project entitled Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care (2013-2020). She is currently engaged in a new research project, Care Economies in Context: Towards Sustainable Social and Economic Development, funded by SSHRC, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Open Society Foundations (PI – Ito Peng). Juyeon Lee is a PhD student in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences program at Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on health inequities, precarious employment, and the political economy of health. Her doctoral research deals with the issue of work-related injuries and deaths in South Korea, centring on critically probing the political economy of occupational health and safety regulatory system in the country. She is currently engaged in a variety of projects in addition to her dissertation work that include Health and the future of work, globally, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and Excess mortality and its inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea, funded by National Medical Center, Seoul, Korea. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T.    

Sustainable Development Goal : 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure focuses on building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization and fostering innovation.Dan Breznitz, is a University Professor and Munk Chair of Innovation Studies, in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy with a cross-appointment in the Department of Political Science of the University of Toronto, where he is also the Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research where he co-founded and co-directs the program on Innovation, Equity and the Future of Prosperity.  Professor Breznitz is known worldwide as an expert on rapid-innovation-based industries and their globalization, as well as for his pioneering research on the distributional impact of innovation policies. He has been a member of several boards, as well as serving an advisor on science, technology, and innovation policies to multinational corporations, governments, and international organizations. Vinyas Harish is a fifth year MD/PhD Candidate at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is also a Postgraduate Affiliate at the Vector Institute and a Graduate Fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. He holds a CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) Award to investigate how digital technology can support public health emergency response and promote resilient health systems. His research areas include machine learning, emergency preparedness, clinical and population decision support systems, and the governance of artificial intelligence in health. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

Sustainable Development Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions focuses on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.Dr. Ross Upshur is currently the Dalla Lana Chair in Clinical Public Health and Head of the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Scientific Director, Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation and Associate Director of the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health. At the University of Toronto, he is a Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Family and Community Medicine, affiliate member of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Member of the Centre for Environment and Adjunct Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. He is a Staff Physician at Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, Sinai Health. In 2015, he was named one of the Top 20 Pioneers in Family Medicine Research in Canada by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and was a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair from 2005-2015. He is an elected Fellow of the Hastings Center and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. During COVID-19 he has served as the co-Chair of the WHO Ethics and COVID-19 Working group and is a member of the WHO ACTA Ethics and Governance Working Group.Rushay Naik is an MSc student in Health Policy & Global Health at the University of Toronto. His research centres on health service delivery in conflict-affected states, and has conducted fieldwork for research initiatives in Greece, Mongolia, and Switzerland. Rushay has held research fellowships at UofT's School of Cities, at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & the Congress in Washington, D.C., and at the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Rushay previously worked for Health Canada’s Climate Change and Innovation Bureau, and is now an incoming intern to the Health Division at the OECD in Paris. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

Sustainable Development Goal: 12 Responsible Consumption and Production focuses on ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns. Quinn Grundy is a registered nurse and an Assistant Professor with the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto and a Faculty Associate with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. She is a fellow with the WHO’s Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability, and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector and the Centre for Sustainable Health Systems at the University of Toronto. Dr. Grundy's research explores the interactions between medically-related industry and the health system, health professionals, and the production of health-related research and the implications for equitable, sustainable public health care. She is the author of Infiltrating healthcare: How marketing works underground to influence nurses (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). Daniel Eisenkraft Klein is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. His SSHRC-funded doctoral research centres on how the pharmaceutical industry frames its involvement in the policymaking sphere. Daniel is presently also a Research Consultant for the Opioid Industry Documents Archive at John's Hopkins University, and has previously taught on the Commercial Determinants of Health at Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Health Sciences. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

Sustainable Development Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals focuses on strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.Jillian Clare Kohler, PhD is a Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is also the Founding Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Governance, Transparency and Accountability in the Pharmaceutical Sector. She is also a Connaught Scholar (2020). Prior to joining the University of Toronto, Dr. Kohler worked on pharmaceutical policy issues at UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Headquarters. She continues to advise United Nations agencies, such as the UNDP, the UNODC and the WHO on issues related to pharmaceutical policy, particularly anti-corruption and related governance issues. Andrea Bowra is a doctoral candidate in Public Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto funded by a Canada Graduate Scholarship. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and a Bachelor of Health Science degree from Western University. Her doctoral research explores how accountability is taken up in global health systems in response to harms caused by the pharmaceutical industry. Andrea is the Managing Editor of the Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health and an organizing member of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

SDG 14: Life Below Water focuses on conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Hiliary Monteith is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and a Registered Dietitian. Hilary's research focus is on diabetes prevention and maternal and infant health using community-based participatory research in partnership with an Indigenous community in Northwestern Ontario. Alongside community members and leaders, she considers the role of health and social factors in infant and early childhood growth trajectories and intergenerational pathways to support chronic disease prevention. Her research interests also include cultural safety within health professional training, food and water security and sovereignty for Indigenous communities, equitable healthcare access and services, Indigenous student mentorship and the intersections between these areas. She is a co-editor for the Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health, which aims to co-create safe spaces within the academic environment and beyond for Indigenous voices and ways of knowing and being. Dr. Tracey Galloway is a biological anthropologist and community health scholar at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her research aims to reduce the burden of chronic disease among Indigenous people living in northern communities by removing existing barriers to health and food security. Tracey works alongside Indigenous leaders, Elders and other allies on projects that improve access to health services and affordable food in northern communities. Tracey’s partnerships extend across the circumpolar north and she is recognized globally as an expert on the health of circumpolar Indigenous populations. She is an active member of the International Union for Circumpolar Health and has worked extensively with scholars from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the Greenland Institute for Public Health, and the Danish National Institute for Public Health. Her work is valued for its commitment to decolonizing principles and its support for Indigenous governance. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T. 

SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy focuses on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.Marina Freire-Gormaly, Ph.D., EIT, LEED GA is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University. Her research focuses on the development of stand-alone solar-powered reverse osmosis water treatment systems and energy recovery systems for remote communities that lack access to grid electricity. She also is interested in machine learning applications for the smart design of innovative energy and water systems. Her research interests are also in advanced manufacturing, smart systems using the Internet of Things & artificial intelligence, and advanced additive manufacturing methods. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in Mechanical Engineering. She has previously been a course instructor for undergraduate energy-related engineering courses at the University of Toronto. She has also worked at Ontario Power Generation (OPG) on the Darlington New Nuclear Project and the Darlington Refurbishment Project. She contributed to a World Bank project evaluating Canada’s ‘Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy (RISE). She currently serves as the Chair of Student and Young Professional Affairs for the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers (CSME). Nitish Ranjan Sarker is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Water and Energy Research Lab at the University of Toronto (U of T). He is also associated with the Centre for Global Engineering at U of T and teaches strategies and challenges of replacing high GHG-emitting energy technologies with renewable and low-carbon alternatives to senior year undergrad/ graduate students. Additionally, Nitish volunteers as the program director of the International Water Association Young Waters Professional in Canada and manages several Pan-Canadian networking and professional development events to dissipate the understanding of the social, economic, and technological aspects of Canadian water research. As a cross-disciplinary researcher, Nitish focuses on technological and systemic innovation of water and clean-energy technologies, broadly relevant to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and how to customize them appropriately based on the target community's needs and constraints. Nitish was also vested with the Mortenson Global Engineering Award earlier this year. CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the DLSPH, U of T, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Sylvia Lorico. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at U of T.