Rate My Professor Elizabeth Saewyc

Elizabeth Saewyc is Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, and has served as Director of the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia since 2017. She founded and serves as Executive Director of the Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC) at UBC, and also directs the McCreary Centre Society. For over 25 years, her research has focused on mixed-methods studies with marginalized and vulnerable youth populations, including runaway and street-involved youth, sexually abused and exploited adolescents, LGBTQ youth, youth in custody, immigrant, refugee and Indigenous youth. Her work examines the effects of stigma, violence and trauma on adolescent health and risk behaviours, as well as protective factors that promote resilience.

Dr. Saewyc held a Canadian Institutes of Health Research–Public Health Agency of Canada Applied Public Health Chair from 2008 to 2014. Her research has been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the US National Institutes of Health, and has influenced public health policy in Canada, the United States and internationally. She led the first Canadian national health survey of transgender youth in 2014. Dr. Saewyc provides consultation on youth health to governments and agencies including the World Health Organization. She is a Fellow of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, the American Academy of Nursing and the Canadian Academy of Nursing, and was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Researcher Hall of Fame in 2019.