Joy Johnson is a Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia (UBC) with long standing interest and leadership in the field of gender and health. She served on the inaugural steering committee for the BC Centre of Excellence for Women's Health and was a co-leader on the BC Network for Women's Health Research. Dr. Johnson founded and co-directed the highly successful multidisciplinary research unit NEXUS, dedicated to research, knowledge translation, and training in the social contexts of health behaviour. She was also a founder and principal investigator for the UBC Centre for Nursing and Health Behaviour Research. She served as the Chair of the Research Advisory Committee of Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. She has served on and chaired research review panels for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the National Cancer Institute of Canada.
Dr. Johnson has a highly productive program of research focusing on health promotion and health behaviour change. Drawing on a broad array of theoretical perspectives her work explores the social, structural and individual factors that influence the health behaviour of individuals. A major thrust of her work focuses on sex and gender issues in substance use and mental health. She has obtained millions of dollars in research funding from national funding organizations and has published over 140 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Johnson’s work has been recognized with numerous awards including the UBC Killam Research Prize. In 2010, she was recognized as one of British Columbia’s 100 Women of Influence.
Dr. Johnson was appointed Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Gender and Health commencing January 2008. In this role she works with the Canadian gender, sex and health research community and stakeholders to identify research priorities, develop research funding opportunities, strengthen research capacity, build partnerships and translate research evidence to improve the health of Canadians.
Link to Dr. Joy Johnson's UBC web page
