Catherine L. Mah

Catherine L. Mah is Professor in the School of Health Administration at Dalhousie University and holds the Canada Research Chair in Promoting Healthy Populations. She is most widely known for her scientific work in nutrition and food insecurity policy and teaches health policy. She was an appointee to Health Canada’s Nutrition Science Advisory Committee (2020-2023) and the inaugural Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council (2020-2022).

Professor Mah’s lab has recently been occupied with questions about food affordability: inequities in food pricing, drivers of purchasing substitutions, cost of a healthy diet. Her goal is to inform the design of policies comprising stronger social protection for Canada, as well as indicators used for routine governmental decision-making. Professor Mah has expertise in pragmatic trials in Canada and Australia, with a particular interest in policy and organizational interventions. Her latest Project Grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research partners with Nova Scotia’s provincial health authority to examine how workplace food pricing shapes health workers’ purchases and diet quality. In addition, she is doing some theoretical work on social and material relations around food affordability in consumer society.

Dr. Mah received her PhD (2009) from the University of Toronto and MD (1998) from the University of Calgary. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in clinical paediatrics. Her doctoral thesis, Governing Immunization in Canada, examined evolving personalisation within the Canadian public health regulatory framework, federal-provincial-territorial relations, and novel vaccine programs. She previously served as the Canadian Public Health Association Liaison Member to the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (2014-2019).

She was a former citizen member of the Toronto Food Policy Council (2011-2014); and founding member of the St. John’s Food Policy Council (2014-2017).

In 2022, Dr. Mah was the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal from Nova Scotia for exemplary public service.