Honouring Indigenous Peoples

The Children’s Health Policy Centre, the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) acknowledge our privilege in being located on the ancestral lands of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl ̓ ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓ icə̓ y̓ (Katzie) and kwikwəƛ ̓ əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations. We understand and commit to the ongoing work of reconciliation that is required to honour all Indigenous Peoples.

The Position

SFU is Canada’s leading comprehensive university. As a strategic priority, its interdisciplinary FHS encourages policy-relevant research and societal engagement to improve the health of children through its Children’s Health Policy Centre. Supporting this priority, the FHS seeks applications from outstanding early-career researchers for a new tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Child Health and Policy. With support from the Mowafaghian Foundation, the successful candidate will be a member of the Centre and will actively contribute to its focus on improving wellbeing for all children and on the public policies needed to reach this goal. This position comes with standard FHS workload expectations of 40% research, 40% teaching and 20% service.

Required Background, Competencies and Strengths

We seek a scholar holding a PhD, and ideally having post-doctoral training or the equivalent, in a child health field relevant to public and population health policy — addressing early social determinants of health, early child development and wellbeing and/or children’s rights. We encourage applications from those with interests and expertise across the developmental range from the pre-conception and prenatal periods through infancy, early childhood and beyond. But we emphasize early antecedents and the early years, given their fundamental importance to the health of individuals and populations. Note that this is not a clinical or laboratory sciences position.

The ideal candidate will have demonstrated strengths in the development and application of innovative and equity-centred approaches such as qualitative, quantitative, Indigenous and/or mixed methods pertaining to child studies. They will have a demonstrated record of building and sustaining successful policy/community relationships — connecting research strengths with “real world” impact to improve child wellbeing locally and/or in Canada and/or beyond. Demonstrated teaching excellence is also required as this new faculty member will teach child health and policy courses in the FHS and will supervise graduate students. University and policy/community service will also be required. Candidates whose research activities contribute to our understanding of diverse populations of children are particularly encouraged to apply. A record of research achievement that contributes to the diversity of research and methodological perspectives in child health is also welcomed.

Beyond these qualifications, the ideal candidate will hold proven expertise relevant across one or more of the core interdisciplinary FHS research challenge areas — particularly Child Health and Developmental Trajectories. Other research challenge areas include Health Policy and Systems, Mental Health, Infectious Diseases and Planetary Health. We will also priorize research programs that amplify our core cross-cutting themes of Indigenous Health, Global Health, Social Inequities, Big Data and/or Translational Research.