Kanna Hayashi

Associate Professor, St. Paul's Hospital Chair in Substance Use Research MSHRBC Scholar

Health Sciences

Kanna Hayashi

Associate Professor, St. Paul's Hospital Chair in Substance Use Research, MSHRBC Scholar

Health Sciences

Areas of interest

Epidemiology, community-based research, public health and human rights, substance use, and health services for drug-using populations

Education

  • BA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
  • MIA & MPH, Columbia University
  • PhD, University of British Columbia

Biography

Dr. Kanna Hayashi joined the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU in September 2016. Dr. Hayashi completed two Master’s degrees in International Affairs and Public Health and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She is also a Research Scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use and Scientific and Research staff at the Vancouver Coastal Health. She has won a number of prestigious academic awards, including the Royal Society of Canada’s Alice Wilson Award and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator Award. At the 2016 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Scientific Consultation on HIV and drugs, she served as the group lead on the role of ARVs in HIV prevention, treatment and care among people who use drugs and co-drafted the Scientific Statement “Science addressing drugs and HIV: State of the Art,” which was presented at the 59th Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs.

Research interests

Dr. Hayashi’s primary research interests and expertise include epidemiology, community-based research, public health and human rights, substance use, and health services for drug-using populations. She currently leads the Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study (VIDUS), a U.S. NIH-funded prospective cohort study of more than 1000 people who inject drugs in Vancouver, which aims to investigate the natural history of injection drug use. She also has extensive international research experience. Since 2008, she has led the Mitsampan Community Research Project, a serial cross-sectional mixed-methods study to investigate drug-using behavior, healthcare access and other drug-related harm among people who inject drugs in Bangkok, Thailand.

Teaching interests

Dr. Hayashi’s teaching interests are in the area of substance use and infectious disease epidemiology, social epidemiology, international drug policy, and health services research focusing on substance use.

Publications and activities

View Dr. Hayashi's publications here.