Dr. Sonia Anand honoured for health advocacy, international scholarship

AllerGen investigator Dr. Sonia Anand has received two recent honours: one for her excellence as an international scholar, the other for her efficacy as an advocate for women’s heart health.

Dr. Anand was one of two professors from the Faculty of Health Sciences named 2016 University Scholars by McMaster University, a recognition of “faculty in mid-career who have already distinguished themselves as international scholars.”

In a separate honour, she was also conferred the 2016 Canadian Women’s Heart Health Advocacy Award, in the Individual Category, by the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. The award recognizes “visionary contributions as an advocate for the heart health of women in Canada, through mobilizing others to increase awareness and take action to reduce women’s risk of heart disease.”

Dr. Anand’s work is dedicated to understanding the genetic and environmental causes of common chronic diseases among diverse cultural groups, women and the socially disadvantaged. She is a professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Director of the Population Genomics Program at McMaster University, where she holds both the Heart and Stroke Foundation/Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Population Health Research and a Canada Research Chair in Ethnic Diversity and Cardiovascular Disease.

Within AllerGen, Dr. Anand is a co-principal investigator of the CIHR-funded CHILD Study project “Early Life Determinants of Asthma.” She is also an investigator in another CIHR-funded project that leverages data from the CHILD Study birth cohort: “Understanding the impact of maternal and infant nutrition on infant/child health in the first 5 years of life.”