Assistant Professor, Division of Social Medicine
Dr. Kathleen Deering (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Deering is also an Investigator with Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, an Associate Member, Division of Occupational and Environmental Health with the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, a Canadian HIV Trials Network Investigator and Women’s Health Research Institute Associate Member. She obtained a BSc Mathematics (UBC), MSc Epidemiology (University of Manitoba) and PhD Epidemiology (UBC).
Dr. Deering’s research interests include: community-based research with people who have experienced trauma and violence; understanding key aspects of trauma-informed practice, with a focus on aligned peer-based approaches, that can address and disrupt the impacts of trauma, violence and stigma as health services barriers; investigating how structural, policy and community interventions can address health and health services access inequities; and methodological issues in health equity research, including related to quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods and arts-based methods. Dr. Deering is a Principal Investigator (PI) on SHAWNA (Sexual Health and HIV/AIDS: Women’s Longitudinal Needs Assessment), a longitudinal community-based open cohort of women living with HIV who live and/or access care in Metro Vancouver, Canada, funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and US National Institutes of Health (2015-2025). She is also a PI on the Food and Beverage Service Workers’ Study (FABS), a two-year study funded by CIHR (2022-2024) that examines the effect of COVID-19 policies on violence, bullying and harassment in the food and beverage service sector in British Columbia. Dr. Deering is also a co-PI (alongside Patience Magagula, Executive Director of Afro-Canadian Positive Network of BC) on Drive for Change, a three-year participatory action research study funded by the Vancouver Foundation (2022-2025) that documents experiences of and social and structural strategies, including peer-based approaches, to address intersecting racism and HIV stigma experienced in healthcare by African, Caribbean and Black people living with HIV in British Columbia. Dr. Deering has authored 70+ peer-reviewed manuscripts on gender-based violence, stigma and other social-ecological/social-structural factors associated with health and health services access inequities, and over 100 abstracts presented at national and international conferences. She has previous support by CIHR New Investigator and current support by Health Research BC (formerly Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR)) Scholar Awards, as well as CIHR and MSFHR Postdoctoral Fellowships and the CIHR Bisby Award. She provides supervision and mentorship to Postdoctoral Fellows and graduate (MPH, MSc, and PhD) students as well as for electives with medical students and students from other health professions. Dr. Deering’s research is informed by principles of community-based research and meaningful inclusion and engagement of affected communities. She has worked closely with a number of national and international interdisciplinary teams from clinical settings as well as community members as co-collaborators and co-creators of every stage of research.