Advancing Regional Health Governance: Research Study Insights & Implications

Dr. Michelle Amri (she/her) (University of British Columbia) is an Assistant Professor of Global Health Ethics and the Mary and Maurice Young Professor in Applied Ethics at the School of Population and Public Health. Dr. Amri’s research is situated in the disciplines of public health and global health and contributes to the field of politics of health. She is working to understand how equity can be better incorporated in public policymaking, both in terms of how relevant actors consider equity in developing policy (e.g., how equity is understood and operationalized) and how equity can be improved in policymaking processes (e.g., multisectoral approaches including those at the city-level, decolonizing policymaking). She has consulted for the World Health Organization for over a decade, serves on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Association for Global Health, co-chaired the Canadian Conference on Global Health in 2023 and 2024, and was named to the list of Canadian Women in Global Health.

Jake Okechukwu Effoduh (Toronto Metropolitan University) is an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. He is also a designated Queen Elizabeth Scholar and a World Economic Forum Global Expert on Human Rights. He served as the Chief Counsel for the Africa-Canada AI and Data Innovation Consortium, where he mobilized several machine-learning and Big Data techniques to build strategies for increaseing societal preparedness for future global pandemics and other public health concerns. Jake served as the human rights compliance personnel and responsible AI advisor for the consortium. He has informed the regulatory frameworks and policy formulation on AI at the UN, the AU, and for domestic institutions in several countries, including Canada, the United States, Brazil, and Nigeria.

Omowamiwa Kolawole (University of Toronto) is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health under the prestigious Public Health Black Postdoctoral Fellowship Program where his research engages with the decolonization of Global health Governance, for more equitable outcomes, for developing countries. He also holds a master’s in law, a PhD in Public Law as well as a master’s in public health from the University of Cape Town. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and advocate, interested in questions at the intersection of human rights law, public health, and global health governance, with a specific focus on the African continent.

Dr. Uche Ngwaba (Toronto Metropoitan University) commenced his academic career as a Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in 2010. Subsequently proceeding to Sydney, Australia, to undertake his doctoral studies. His doctoral research utilised a comparative method to explore how human rights framework can strengthen Nigeria’s health system to achieve universal health coverage. Before taking up his current appointment as an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Dr. Ngwaba taught as a sessional lecturer in three Australian Universities for about five years (namely, Macquarie University Sydney, Deakin University Melbourne, and University of Western Sydney). Dr. Ngwaba’s scholarship engages multidisciplinary, comparative, and socio-legal methods in exploring complex questions affecting health governance frameworks in the Global North and South. His work engages extensively with health regulatory systems. He engages critical human rights perspectives and post-colonial theory to examine how health governance and regulatory systems impact health outcomes in the Global North and South. Dr. Ngwaba currently leads a program of research focused on advancing a regional health governance approach in the Inter-American System.

Udoka Ndidiamaka Owie (Yorkville University) is an Associate Professor of International Law. She obtained both her PhD in International Law and LLM (Distinction) in International Law degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom. She has held the Distinguished Harry Arthurs Fellowship at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada where she also did her Post Doctoral Fellowship on a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant at the Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security Studies at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law and also currently co-chairs the Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Interest Group of the African Society of International Law. Her scholarly works have also included regional health governance at the African Union.

Sarah Fixon-Owoo, MSN, RN is a nurse leader and clinical researcher with deep expertise across emergency medicine, labor and delivery, PACU, medical-surgical telemetry, and community health. She holds a Master of Science in Nursing from UMass Chan Medical School and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Mount Holyoke College. Her research includes bacterial studies on Bacillus subtilis and contributions to global health and pharmaceutical projects. As a speaker and advocate for health equity, she bridges clinical practice and scientific inquiry to inform policy, strengthen health systems, and advance inclusive, data-driven care on a global scale.