Debra Hanberg, Project Manager
Email: debra.hanberg@ubc.ca
Phone: 604-827-4976

Debra Hanberg joined CCPHE as a Project Manager in 2011. She is responsible for a five-year project focused on preventing sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections among people who are federally incarcerated in BC. Debra graduated from UBC with a BA in Philosophy and SFU in Sustainable Community Development. She is passionate about the opportunities community-based participatory research holds for affecting positive change for people who have experienced incarceration.

Kate Roth, Project Manager
Email: kate.roth@ubc.ca
Phone: 604-822-9057

Kate joined CCPHE in March 2016. She is currently managing a five-year project aimed at developing trauma and resiliency-informed supports for men with a history of incarceration. Kate completed her Masters degree in Anthropology from UBC in 2015. Kate is dedicated to working with men and women who have experienced incarceration through CCPHE’s participatory and collaborative approaches to prison health research.

Nelson Luk, Project Coordinator
Email: nelson.luk@ubc.ca
Phone: 604-827-4976

Nelson joined CCPHE in October 2019. He is currently assisting on a five-year project focused on participatory approaches to preventing sexually transmitted and blood-born infections among federally incarcerated men in BC as well as the Unlocking the Gates Peer Mentor Program. Nelson completed his undergraduate degree in Life Sciences from UBC. He previously assisted with public health research projects at the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS in Malaysia and the BC Injury Research & Prevention Unit at the BC Children’s Hospital.

Heather Palis, Evaluator
Email: heather.palis@bccdc.ca

Heather is currently the evaluator on a five-year project focused on participatory approaches to preventing sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections among federally incarcerated men in BC. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at UBC in the Department of Psychiatry and at the BC Centre for Disease Control. Her research seeks to investigate recent interventions introduced in response to the overdose crisis in British Columbia (e.g. expanded opioid agonist treatment, pharmaceutical alternatives to the toxic drug supply), with a focus on the impact of these interventions on overdose risk among people who have been recently incarcerated.

Sidney Hoolsema, Project Assisstant
Email: sidney.hoolsema@bccdc.ca

Sidney Hoolsema joined CCPHE in November 2023. She is currently assisting Dr. Slaunwhite and the BC Provincial Overdose Cohort. Sidney is working on a five-year project that seeks to understand the Geography of Overdose. Sidney graduated with a BA in Psychology with Honors from the University of the Fraser Valley. Her Honors research examined how stigma changes depending on the type of addiction someone has. Sidney is passionate about decreasing stigma around addiction and incarceration and improving access to stigma-free health care.