Hailey Banack appointed inaugural Novo Nordisk Research Professor in Health Equity of Chronic Illness Prevention

Hailey Banack has been appointed as the inaugural Novo Nordisk Research Professor in Health Equity of Chronic Illness Prevention, as part of the University of Toronto’s Novo Nordisk Network for Healthy Populations.

An assistant professor of epidemiology at U of T's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Banack’s work centres on obesity and aging, with an interest in novel measurement approaches for body composition in older adults and understanding age-related change in body composition among women and individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups. She is a standing member of the Diabetes, Obesity, and Lipoprotein peer review committee at the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and the Aging Musculoskeletal Research peer review panel at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is also a member of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, American College of Epidemiology, the Obesity Society, and the Gerontological Society of America.

In this role, Banack will build on her established innovative research trajectory to develop and lead a productive, collaborative, and practical research program that addresses equity and the social determinants of health in the risk of chronic illness. This will also include sharing knowledge locally and broadly with different interested parties and fostering a cross-disciplinary community-focused vision to build capacity with learners and community members and demonstrate attention to the broader public health and societal contexts.

Established in 2021 with a donation from Novo Nordisk Canada, U of T’s Novo Nordisk Network for Healthy Populations is an interdisciplinary research network that aims to reduce the burden of diabetes and related chronic conditions. Based at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), the network brings together leading researchers from UTM, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.