P.O.V.

Ideas at the intersection of evidence, policy and change.

I write about the questions that emerge when scientific evidence meets real-world decision-making — particularly in global health, substance use, mental health, emerging technologies and public policy.

Recent themes

Responsible AI requires more than principles
What implementation actually demands from health systems.

Why evidence-informed policy is harder than it sounds
The distance between knowing what works and making it happen.

Public health has a communication problem
Why accuracy is necessary, but not sufficient, for effective risk communication.

What international experience teaches us about policy transfer
Why good ideas do not automatically survive a change in context.

Making evidence useful means identifying what matters, understanding uncertainty and translating research into guidance, policy, priorities and action.

Explore selected projects I am leading and collaborating on:

Mental Health & Substance Use Health

Substance use and mental health have been central threads throughout my career. My work has examined cannabis regulation, alcohol policy, substance-use treatment, risk communication, concurrent disorders and population-level approaches to reducing harm.

A steady through line in my work has been to appeal to the systems, policies and environments that determine whether better health outcomes are possible at scale to influence health in all policies.

Watch this space for new projects examining:

Measurement Based Care
Better care starts with knowing what works. MBC brings evidence into everyday practice; tracking progress, guiding adjustments, and improving outcomes over time.

More to come.

Artificial Intelligence & Health-System Innovation

Emerging technologies are changing how health information, services and decisions are delivered.

My current projects at CCSA include helping advance national guidance for the responsible use of artificial intelligence in mental health and substance use health care in Canada..

The questions that interest me are larger than technology itself and beg questions regarding inequitable population absorption of risks and benefits, accountability, scale, and human rights considerations; particularly among populations of interest experiencing particular vulnerabilities.

These are fundamentally questions of governance, evidence and human judgement.

Global Health & Population Health

My perspective has been shaped by working across countries, institutions and health systems.

From national cannabis policy research in Canada, to developmental and behavioural research in Switzerland, mental health and substance-use surveillance in Nigeria among key populations, and technical contributions to WHO initiatives, my career has consistently involved connecting local realities with international evidence.

That experience has reinforced a principle that now underpins much of my work: good policy cannot simply be transferred from one context to another.

Evidence must be interpreted through institutions, culture, political realities, implementation capacity and the populations a policy is intended to serve.