Cathy Slavik, PhD, MPH

Researcher in
Environmental Health
& Health Communication

Dr. Slavik is an Assistant Professor and the Legacy for Airway Health Chair in Health Communication at Simon Fraser University. Before that, she was a Behavioural Science Research Fellow at Impact Canada and Health Canada’s Tobacco Control Directorate. Previously, she held the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oregon’s Center for Science Communication Research. Dr. Slavik is interested in how social and environmental factors shape our health and in improving communication tools so that health information is better understood and used in practice. Her current work focuses on enhancing public awareness and informed decision-making around major lung disease risk factors, including wildfire smoke, radon, and tobacco. She received her PhD from the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University and her Master’s of Public Health from the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her work has been featured on OPB (NPR), KATU (ABC News), KPTV, the Narwhal, and CBC.

Dr. Slavik also holds extensive research expertise in disease surveillance and environmental and occupational exposure assessment, having spent nearly a decade as a researcher (now Affiliated Scientist) at the Occupational Cancer Research Centre at Ontario Health. Much of her past research has focused on characterizing exposures to various environmental and occupational hazards and developing risk communication tools to encourage adaptation, mitigation, and behaviour change.