Research Directors

Elana Brief is a Research Director for the Women’s Health Research Network (WHRN) where she inspires BC health researchers to ask how sex and gender may influence the conditions they study.  She holds a PhD in Physics from the University of British Columbia where she developed methods for using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to non-invasively measure concentrations of chemicals in human brain. During her post-doctoral fellowships she used similar techniques to study the human lung in Paris, France and to analyze fabricated human skin at Simon Fraser University. As a part-time Researcher in Physics at UBC, she continues to work with physicists, radiologists, dermatologists, endocrinologists and neurologists to answer biological questions with physical techniques. Throughout her academic career, Elana has engaged in science outreach – bringing the excitement of scientific inquiry to the general public. Elana currently serves as President of the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) to encourage and promote women and girls to engage in science.

Colleen Reid is a Research Director for the Women’s Health Research Network. She earned an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the areas of health promotion research, women’s studies, and education. Her doctoral dissertation, The Wounds of Exclusion: Poverty, Women’s Health, and Social Justice (2004) was a feminist action research project with women on low-income and examined the relationship between exclusion, poverty, and women’s health. In her postdoctoral research at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the British Columbia Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health she conducted a province-wide action research project with four diverse communities that explored the relationship between women’s employability (i.e. women’s relationship to the formal and informal economies) and health, wellbeing and safety. She has devoted her research career to studying the social determinants of women’s health, gender and health, and community-based research methodologies. Colleen’s earlier background is in physical and health education and human kinetics, and through her work and research she has bridged the development of critical understandings of marginalization, gender, and health behaviours (particularly physical in/activity) with the development of innovative research methodologies that are responsive to community interests and needs.