Dr. John O Neil

Biography

John O’Neil is a Professor in Global Indigenous Health at Simon Fraser University. His work primarily supports Indigenous health and he has published over 150 papers and reports addressing a variety of Indigenous health issues, including self-government health system development and cultural understandings of environmental health risks. O’Neil served as the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU from 2007 to 2017 and was previously the Director of the Manitoba Nations Centre for Aboriginal Health Research. He has also headed the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Medicine. His PhD in Medical Anthropology was completed at the University of California, San Francisco/Berkeley in 1983. O'Neil's expertise has been recognized through various appointments, including as a CIHR Senior Investigator and as the founding Chair of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Indigenous People's Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He has acted as a research advisor to the health policy team for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and is a founding member of the Advisory Board of the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health in Canada. His research spans global Indigenous health issues across Southeast Asia, circumpolar regions, Australia, and Latin America. Currently, he leads research projects aimed at improving access to maternal and child health services for Indigenous women in remote areas of Vietnam and Thailand, with a focus on depression prevention and treatment and the implementation of community-based services.

Research Interests