Senior Investigator, Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies, Lady Davis Institute
Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University
Jean-François Boivin is a physician (Laval, 1973) and a specialist in community medicine (Université de Montréal, 1990). He also holds a doctoral degree in epidemiology (Harvard, 1981). His current research interests include homelessness and health, risk factors and temporal patterns of addiction, and the evaluation of emergency health services.
Dr. Boivin has served on various scientific and policy committees such as the Scientific Council of the Québec Research Institute for Health and Occupational Safety (1997-2001), the Scientific Council of France's Mutuelle générale de l’éducation nationale (1999-2002), and the Advisory Board of the CIHR Institute of Health Services and Policy Research (2004-2008).
He was a consultant and examiner for the Faculty of Medicine of Kuwait (1998-2002).He is currently a member of the Québec Regional Advisory Committee of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the Fellowships Affairs of the Royal College, and the Board of Directors of the Canadian Center on Substance Abuse.
Major Research Activities
1.
Research on Drug Side Effects. Risk
of developing cancer after being treated with varied classes of
drugs. We have documented the protective effect of anti-inflammatory
drugs using an extensive database covering 15 years of follow-up. We
have also analyzed the risk of breast and prostate cancers associated
with use of antidepressants and we determined how hormonal
replacement therapy affected the risk of breast cancer in
postmenopausal women. We also examined the risk of breast cancer in
relation to the use of antibiotics. Finally, we determined the risk
of cancer in patients treated for lupus erythematosus.
2.
Research on Street Youth.
Incidence, prevalence, and risk factors for AIDS and hepatitis among
street youth in Montreal. This cohort study conducted by Dr. Élise
Roy (University of Sherbrooke) was used to determine the evolution of
risk factors in this population and to document the relative risk for
other problems such as the incidence of suicide. Our work has also
addressed various aspects of drug abuse among young people and other
precarious populations.
3.
Methodological Research in Epidemiology. Throughout
my career, I became interested in the improvement and development of
tools for epidemiological research. I have published on case-cohort
design, the validity of methods for collecting nutritional data, the
interpretation of effect measures in epidemiology, the two-stage
sampling, outside comparison in the context of case-control studies,
statistical modeling and causal analysis. More recently I worked on
methodological studies on the interpretation of meta-analyses.
4.
Evaluation of Technologies and Health Services. We
have developed a scale to measure the results of laser refractive
surgery from the patient perspective. In the field of evaluation of
hospital emergency departments, we have characterized the patient
populations coming to emergencies and determined the impact of
electronic communication tools on the operations in the emergency
departments.
Recent Publications
De P, Cox J, Boivin JF, Platt RW, Jolly AM, Alexander PE. HIV and HCV discordant injecting partners and their association to drug equipment sharing. Scandinavian Journal of Infectious Diseases 2009; 41:206-214.
Filion KB, Joseph L, Boivin JF, Suissa S, Brophy JM. Trends in the prescription of anti-diabetic medications in the United Kingdom: a population-based analysis. Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety 2009; 18: 973-976.
Bernatsky S, Joseph L, Pineau CA, Bélisle P, Boivin JF, Banerjee D, Clarke AE. Estimating the prevalence of polymyositis and dermatomyositis from administrative data: age, sex and regional differences. Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2009; 68:1192– 1196.