Principal Investigators
LEAD INVESTIGATIVE TEAM
Lead Principal Investigator: Dr. Parminder Raina: is the director of the Evidence-based Practice Center and a Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario. Dr. Parminder Raina specializes in epidemiology of aging, injury and knowledge transfer. He is a Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University. Dr. Raina is the lead investigator of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging and has served as a Hamilton site lead investigator for Canadian Study of Health Aging (population study of Dementia). Dr. Raina holds the Raymond and Margaret Labarge Chair in Research and Knowledge Application for Optimal Aging. He is the Director of the Evidence-based Practice Center at McMaster University,
funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He was awarded the Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award in research on aging in 2002. Dr. Raina also holds an Investigator award from CIHR. He is co-leading the Collaborations for Health theme on Development Across the Life Span. Dr. Raina is leading several multidisciplinary programs of research funded by national (CIHR) and international (AHRQ in the US) funding agencies. He is Co-Director of R. Samuel McLaughlin Centre for Research and Education in Aging and Health. Dr. Raina is also leading a CIHR funded interdisciplinary capacity enhancement team on injuries across the life span, and is the founding member and investigator of the provincially (Ontario) funded Research Coalition of Research Institutes/Centres on Health & Aging (ORC). Dr. Raina has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and reports in wide variety of health topics. He is actively involved in the supervision of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and has served as an advisor to several provincial, federal and international agencies.
Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Christina Wolfson is the Director of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at McGill University Health Centre and a Professor in the department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics & Occupational Health; and Medicine McGill University Montréal, Québec. Dr. Wolfson is the Director of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the McGill University Health Centre in Montréal. She is also a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. She is trained both as a biostatistician and epidemiologist, and her program of research lies in the epidemiology of neurodegenerative disorders, particularly dementia and multiple sclerosis, and in population-based studies of the needs of seniors living in the community. She was the Montréal site (joint McGill-Université de Montréal) principal investigator for the CSHA for 10 years and has also led a provincially funded research team 
on the epidemiology of dementia. As part of the CSHA, she was the principal investigator for a nationally funded Medical Research Council supplementary study of the clinical course of dementia in the CSHA. Most recently she is the principal investigator of a CIHR, Canadian Health Services Research Foundation funded longitudinal study on unmet needs for community-based services in the community-dwelling seniors over the age of 75 years. She is a co-principal investigator (along with Drs. Bergman and Béland) on the Canadian Initiative on Frailty and Aging (CIFA), funded by the Max Bell Foundation and is a co-investigator on the CIHR Interdisciplinary Health Research Team (The challenges of understanding and meeting the needs of frail older persons in the Canadian health care system) on which she is the leader of the research axis "Population Based Studies of the Elderly." Apart from her substantive research in geriatrics and in neurology, Dr. Wolfson maintains an active methodological/statistical research program, the goals of which are to improve both the design and analysis of epidemiological studies.
Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Susan Kirkland is a Professor Departments of Community Health & Epidemiology; and Medicine, Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Susan Kirkland is Professor and Clinical Research Scholar in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology as well as/and in the Department of Medicine at Dalhousie University. She is the Associate Director (Population Studies) of the Geriatric Medicine Research Unit at Dalhousie, Affiliate Scientist at the QEII Health Sciences Centre, 
and a founding member of the Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health. She is trained as an epidemiologist, with expertise in epidemiological methods, health services utilization and women’s health and aging. Her research relates to the epidemiological examination of health outcomes that are prevalent in older populations, including Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) and osteoporosis, and the exploration of underlying determinants of health, including lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, and the interplay between gender and the genetic, social, cultural and economic determinants of health. Dr. Kirkland has been involved as a principal investigator and co-investigator in nationally funded projects on aging to address preventable drug-related morbidities, rural health, the role of CVD risk factors in dementia, the epidemiology of cognitive impairment and the genetic epidemiology of early versus late onset of CVD. She has contributed to several large-scale surveys and longitudinal studies, including the Canadian National Breast Screening Study, the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CaMos), the CHHS, the Nova Scotia Health Survey, and the Canadian Study on Health and Aging (CSHA); she is Director of the Halifax site of CaMos.