John W. Frank, MD, CCFP, MSc, FRCPC

Dr. John Frank trained in Medicine and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Family Medicine at McMaster University, and in Epidemiology and Community Health for Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  In 1983 he took up a tenure-track Assistant Professorship in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics (now the Department of Public Health Sciences) at the University of Toronto, as Director of Canada’s largest public health training program at the Master’s-degree level.

He was the founding Director of Research at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto from 1991 until 1997, and is currently a Senior Scientist there. That Institute's research program aims to identify and act upon major preventable causes of work-related disability - such as low back pain. The Institute has developed, in the last dozen years, the largest mission-driven research program in work-related disability in North America, and its accomplishments include one of the most conclusive epidemiologic studies ever conducted on the multi-factorial etiology of occupational low-back pain, as well as one of the largest and most sophisticated studies ever conducted of the multi-factorial determination of long-term prognosis in workers with musculoskeletal soft-tissue injuries.

Dr. Frank was a Scholar (beginning in 1987), and then a Fellow (since 1991) with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Population Health Program, and is a Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Public Health Sciences. As a physician-epidemiologist, with special expertise in prevention, his main area of interest is the biopsychosocial determinants of health status at the population level. His research interests, reflected in over 165 publications over the last 20 years, have also included epidemiological studies of immunization and infectious disease, cancer screening, heart disease causation and cholesterol screening, diarrheal disease in the tropics, several aspects of the causation and prevention of musculoskeletal occupational disability, and more recently, gene-environment interactions and genetic screening.

Dr. Frank was Provostial Advisor on Population Health at the University of Toronto from 1994 to 1997. From 1997 to 2001, he was Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received the Distinguished Teacher and Mentor of the Year Award, related to his role as a prime teacher for the Doctorate in Public Health Program. In December 2000, he was appointed Inaugural Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) - Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH), located at the University of Toronto. As one of thirteen CIHR Institutes across the country, IPPH's mandate is to study the full range of determinants of health, and systematically apply that knowledge to improve population health status, both in Canada and globally. With over $8,000,000.00 in funds annually, the Institute's thematic priorities are:

• Improving physical and social environments that effect health;
• Gene-environment interactions in disease causation;
• Assessing and addressing health disparities (socioeconomic, gender-related, ethno-racial, and geographic); and,
• "Global" health problems of lower and middle income countries, as well as of disadvantaged populations in developed countries.

In late 2004, Dr. Frank was seconded, part-time, to advise the new Public Health Agency of Canada on scientific advisory structures for a national Network of Collaborating Centres in Public Health.

On February 24, 2005, Dr. Frank was presented with the John F. Hasting Award; by the Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, for "Excellence in Service to the University and the Community, 2004."