Assistant Professor, Division of Social Medicine
Dr. Danya Fast, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Medicine, Department of Medicine, at UBC. She is also an Associate Member in the Department of Anthropology at UBC, and a Research Scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use, where she co-leads the Youth Health program. Since 2007, her anthropological and community-based participatory research in Vancouver, Canada and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania has focused on the relationship between health and place among young people who use drugs in the social, spatial, and economic margins of the city. Her current research, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, SickKids Foundation, and Vancouver Foundation, is focused on tracing the substance use treatment and care trajectories of young people in Greater Vancouver, as they navigate multiple systems of supervision and successive waves of public health emergency. This research is undertaken in partnership with Directions Youth Services and a Youth Health Advisory Council. Dr. Fast is supported by a Scholar Award from Michael Smith Health Research BC.
Her research interests include: substance use, substance use care, harm reduction, youth health, community-based participatory action research, qualitative methods, arts-based methods, and medical anthropology.