Kiffer G. Card, Ph.D.

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor (grant tenure) in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, where I hold the Blanche and Charlie Beckerman Scholar for Public Health Innovation and a Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar award. I direct the Healthy Ecologies and Lifestyles Lab and serve as President for three non-profit organizations, including Island Sexual Health Community Health Centre, the Canadian Alliance for Social Connection and Health (CASCH) and the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance (MHCCA).

As a social epidemiologist, my research program asks how the social environment shapes mental and physical health - and what governments, health systems, and communities can do about it. I work across three interconnected lines of inquiry: social connection and loneliness (including social-prescribing pathways); climate change and mental health; and syndemics and public-health crises. What unifies them is a focus on health equity: understanding how social position and the conditions people live in, rather than individual behaviour alone, produce unequal health. That shared logic is laid out in my theoretical framework. I lead this work as Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on funding from CIHR, SSHRC, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Michael Smith Health Research BC, the BC Ministry of Health, the Canadian Red Cross, and several philanthropic partners.

Moving beyond traditional academic scholarship, I translate this work into public-health infrastructure through community-based engagement and knowledge translation -- ensuring that my lab's research is readily taken up by policy makers and practitioners locally and globally.

Equity, diversity, inclusion & reconciliation.

My approach to equity, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation is shaped by lived experience: encountering discrimination as a gay man, finding my footing in university as a first-generation college student, picking up the unwritten rules of academia after growing up in a low-income household, and navigating institutions while living with chronic illness and non-visible disability. I treat this work as operational - not aspirational - and it shapes how I teach, lead, collaborate, and conduct research. A fuller account of my philosophy and the concrete practices I use across research, teaching, mentorship, and service is on a dedicated page.

Full record.

The complete curriculum vitae - with all publications, presentations, grants, supervision, service, and media appearances - is available for download. A short summary of the record is reproduced on the Research, Teaching, and Service pages.