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*In April 2022, the university announced our new name of Toronto Metropolitan University, which will be implemented in a phased approach. Learn more about our next chapter.*

TMCIS header. The TMCIS logo against a background of a blurred crowd on a crosswalk.
Welcome to TMCIS
Josephine Wong

Dr. Josephine Pui-Hing Wong

Professor
DepartmentDaphne Cockwell School of Nursing
OfficeDCC 580B
Phone416 979 5000 ext. 556303
Areas of ExpertiseCritical public health and urban health promotion; community-based action research; social identities and health practices; migration, HIV, and mental health; intervention research and implementation science; and community-driven capacity building and resilience strategies

Dr. Josephine Pui-Hing Wong has extensive experience in critical public health. Prior to joining Ryerson, she was a Planning and Policy Consultant at Toronto Public Health, where she undertook leadership roles in the development of the Access and Equity Policy, the Toronto Public Health Practice Framework, and large-scale health communication campaigns.  She collaborates with marginalized communities to develop, implement and evaluate health promotion and capacity building programs. Josephine see students as active learners with lived experiences that inform their personal- professional perspectives and practices. Her teaching focuses on community health nursing and people-centered urban health promotion, with an emphasis on addressing structural violence and social determinants of health. In addition to her assigned teaching, she collaborates with community partners to establish community-campus critical learning circles that bring together community stakeholders and students to engage in collaborative learning and writing. Josephine’s program of research is underpinned by the principles of social justice and equity. She is committed to doing research “with” and “not for” the affected communities.  She seeks to answer the “so what” question in all her research. Being mindful of the need and urgency to go beyond understanding specific phenomena about health inequities, she works closely with the affected communities to develop socially innovative solutions that promote collective resilience and social change. Her areas of research include: social identities and health practices, migration, HIV, sexual health, and mental health in diasporic and transnational communities. She has led and is leading numerous intervention studies on stigma reduction in the Asian, Black and Latino diasporic communities in Canada as well as among university students in China. Her research is supported by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), the Movember Foundation, and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

"Every project that we’ve done so far has led into actions. Either we work with communities so that we develop and design a program based on the evidence, or we are actively engaging communities to change policies so that it can have long term impact."

RCIS met with Dr. Josephine Pui-Hing Wong, based in the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Ryerson University, on March 12th, 2020. Dr. Wong spoke about the weSpeak project focused on promoting HIV resilience among heterosexual Black men and the PROTECH project focused on supporting Chinese-Canadians experiencing anxiety, stigma, and racism around COVID-19.

TMCIS occupies space in the traditional and unceded territory of nations including the Anishnaabeg, the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and territory which is also now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. This territory is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, as well as the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas.