Passion for social justice led new professor to career in public health

Claire Benny

A career in research wasn’t on Claire Benny’s radar until she received a small student award from her university in northern B.C. that allowed her to work with a psychologist studying motor vehicle collisions and alcohol policy.

She was hooked. She went on to complete her master’s at the University of British Columbia, during which she did research on cannabis and non-traffic injuries and began working in Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside.

“I became passionate about social justice and how it relates to public health.”

Benny has brought that passion to the School of Public Health, completing her PhD in epidemiology in 2023 and joining the faculty as an assistant professor in 2025.

Her research interests centre on the social inequities in injury risk, injury severity and the quality of life after injury.

“Injury isn’t distributed equally,” she says. “Folks who experience injuries — whether they get better, how quickly they get better and their experience throughout the rest of their life span really is determined by their social environment.”

One of her current research projects looks at workplace injury and drug poisoning in Alberta. Benny uses the term “drug poisoning” to reflect evidence that the majority of drug overdoses are caused by contaminated drug supply, and are therefore an unintentional injury.

Workplace injury and drug poisoning are disproportionately high in the Prairie provinces, and specifically in Alberta, says Benny. The study will use census and emergency department data from 2016-2023 to determine whether there’s a relationship between emergency visits related to drug poisoning and a history of workplace injury. The goal is to estimate the excess burden of drug poisoning among people with workplace injuries living in Alberta.

“Evidence suggests that lots of people who use drugs may start to use them because they’re in pain in one way or another. … Yet there is very little research on workplace injury and drug use or drug poisoning.”

The study’s results will help advocate for and develop programs for people post-injury, as well as serve to educate employers, workers compensation boards and occupational safety bodies about the risks of drug poisoning after injury.

Funding has been provided by the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Matters (CRISM).

Learn more about the important research happening in the School of Public Health in the 2024-25 Research Impact Report »