Speakers
Meet our Speakers!
Dr. Jennifer Balfour
Dr. Balfour has a medical degree from the University of Alberta and completed her pediatric residency and a year of fellowship training in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at British Columbia Children’s Hospital in 1994. She has practiced in Comox, in Nanaimo, and has been in Victoria for more than 18 years. She values the wide range of medical and developmental problems that a generalist consultant pediatrician sees, including issues of recurrent infections, perinatal infections, fevers, and vaccine issues. Medical education is a top priority, as well as community involvement and advocacy. In addition to running her practice, Dr. Balfour is the Co-Medical Director of Ambulatory Care for Island Health, supervises medical students in Victoria, and is the program director for Victoria’s local Pediatric Residency Program. Dr. Balfour also serves on the executive board for the BC Pediatric Society (provincial advocacy group) and is a member of the Centre for Health Promotion with the Doctors of BC committee that works for system change and health promotion for vulnerable members of society
Dr. Aamir Bharmal
Aamir Bharmal is a public health physician who serves as Medical Director of Public Health Response at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), where he leads a multidisciplinary team that helps the province detect, prepare, respond, and recover from emerging public health threats including communicable diseases.
He is a Clinical Associate Professor with the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and also serves as a Corporate Medical Director with Cleveland Clinic Canada, where he advises employers as they establish and sustain health and wellness initiatives and programming for their organizations.
Prior to the BCCDC, Dr. Bharmal was a Medical Health Officer and the Medical Director for Communicable Diseases and Harm Reduction for five years at Fraser Health Authority, where he had medical oversight for communicable disease and sexual health programming for the region.
Dr. Angel Chu
Dr. Chu has a BSc. Honors Degree in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta. She is a Medical Doctor with special training in research from the U of A. Dr. Chu completed her internal medicine residency at U of C, then infectious diseases fellowship at U of C. She then went onto Infectious Diseases subspecialty training at St.Pauls hospital in Vancouver.
Dr. Chu is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor and Infectious Diseases specialist at Cumming School of Medicine. She is the Medical Director of Calgary STI Clinic and the Vice-Chair of Immunize Canada. Her special interest is in adult immunizations.
Dr. Wayne Ghesquiere
Dr Wayne Ghesquiere is a Clinical Infectious Diseases, Tropical Diseases and Internal Medicine consultant in Victoria BC as well as the former section chief for infectious diseases with the Vancouver Island Health Authority, VIHA.
Wayne is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine with University of British Columbia. Teaches internal medicine residents and infectious diseases fellows. He is an attending physician at the Royal Jubilee and the Victoria General Hospitals in Victoria, BC. He has an inpatient and a private outpatient practice in infectious diseases.
Wayne is the chair and organizer of the annual Infectious Diseases Update in Victoria now in it’s 26th year. He is also the medical director of the Nova Travel Medicine and Immunization Clinic in Victoria.
Current areas of interests include clinical research in Hepatitis B and C antiviral therapies, new vaccines, and teaching. He is a principal investigator of many clinical trials. He has publications in peer-reviewed medical journals including the NEJM, Lancet, Clinical Infectious Diseases, CMAJ, Open Medicine and others.
Dr. Ronald Grossman
Ronald F. Grossman is Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto and previous Chief of Medicine, Credit Valley Hospital, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Dr. Grossman has published over 90 articles in a wide number of medical journals including New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine, American Journal of Medicine and Chest. His major research and teaching interests are in respiratory tract infections. He has participated in the creation of Canadian and American guidelines for the management of community-acquired pneumonia, Canadian guidelines for the management of hospital-acquired pneumonia and Canadian and international guidelines for the management of acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive lung disease.
He previously served as the chairman of the National Information Program on Antibiotics (NIPA), a coalition of many medical and public health societies. This coalition was established to encourage the appropriate use of antibiotics among physicians and patients.
He recently was awarded the Murray Kornfeld Memorial Founder’s Lectureship by the American College of Chest Physicians.
Dr. Susan Hollenberg
Dr. Susan Hollenberg is a graduate of UBC Medical School. She has been in General Practice in urban and rural settings since 1989. Dr. Hollenberg is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Family Practice, and the Educational Director of the UBC Health Clinic, where she supervises medical residents, students and interdisciplinary learners in a Family Practice setting.
Over the past twenty years, she has provided pre-travel medical advice at the VCH Travel Clinic and the TMVC Travel Clinic. She has also worked in Vancouver Coastal Health clinics providing care to youth, refugees, and higher needs primary care populations. She is affiliated with the BC Tropical Medicine Interest Group and is on the planning committee of the annual UBC Tropical and Geographic Medicine conference. Dr. Hollenberg is a consultant to the BC Immunization Committee Professional Education Working Group. She presents regular CME on global infectious disease and health, travel health and immunization.
Dr. Mark Hull
Dr. Mark Hull completed his Infectious Diseases training at the University of British Columbia and undertook further HIV training through the HIV Clinical Trials Network Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program. He provides HIV care at St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. He has a research focus on HIV Pre-exposure prophylaxis and prevention of other sexually transmitted infections.
Ajit Johal
Ajit has been providing immunizations and clinical education since 2012. As a community pharmacist, he is an accessible provider of immunizations to patients in the community. In 2018, he started an organization called immunize.io with a mission statement of “taking our best shot at immunizing the world”. Through “immunize.io” he has worked with numerous organizations and communities to address “vaccine hesitancy” and improve vaccine access. He champions community pharmacists as key providers of immunization services, in increasing immunization capacity globally. Ajit is also a clinical assistant professor for the University of British Columbia Faculty of Sciences program. At UBC, he has coordinated an elective course for UBC pharmacy students in travel health and immunizations.
Dr. Kamran Khan
Dr. Kamran Khan is an infectious disease physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto. Motivated by his experiences as a frontline healthcare worker during the 2003 Toronto SARS outbreak, Dr. Khan has been studying outbreaks over the past 15 years to lay the scientific foundation for a global early warning system for infectious diseases. His research has been published in scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Science and Nature. To translate and disseminate scientific knowledge into timely action, Dr. Khan founded BlueDot, a digital health company that uses human and artificial intelligence to help governments protect their citizens, hospitals protect their staff and patients, and businesses protect their employees and customers from dangerous infectious diseases. His research during public health emergencies has led him into numerous advisory roles from the World Health Organization to the White House. Dr. Khan received a Governor General’s Award for his work transcending clinical medicine, public health, big data, and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Torrance Oravec
Torrance grew up in Southern Alberta and fell in love with the West Coast during his undergraduate degree at UVIC. He completed his medical school and internal medicine residency at McMaster University, infectious diseases fellowship at UBC, and has made it back to the Island where he practices in Nanaimo. When he isn't at work he prefers to be exploring the local trails and rock climbing walls.
Dr. David Sweet
Dr David Sweet completed fellowship positions in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He is an attending in Critical Care Medicine at Vancouver General Hospital. He is the provincial clinical lead for sepsis quality improvement with Health Quality BC and in 2022 Dr Sweet accepted the position of Executive Medical Director of Health Quality BC. He is Co-Founder and Co-President of the Clarity Foundation, a charity combating misinformation on social media. In 2015 Dr Sweet received the Global Sepsis award for the recent advances in sepsis care in British Columbia.
Dr. Pamela Kibsey
Dr Kibsey was born in Edmonton in a family of 4 girls. Attended University of Alberta Medical School. Residency in Pediatrics and Microbiology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario and U of T. Following a brief working stint in Toronto, Pamela returned to Edmonton to become the Director of Microbiology at the University of Alberta Hospitals. Eventually, she was headhunted to Victoria to become the first Medical Microbiologist on Vancouver Island in the Capital Health Region. Her proud achievements include the first total automation line in a publicly funded hospital in North America in 2014. Pamela loves robotics and roses too. When she is not at work, you will find her in the garden on her farm in Central Saanich.