With nursing professor Dr. Bukola Salami's, PhD, recent appointment, the Faculty of Nursing is now home to over half of the Canadian Nurses Association's executive committee and another Canada Research Chair.
Dr Salami, PhD, CNA vice-president, became a professor in the Faculty of Nursing on Sept. 1, 2024. She currently holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Tier 1 CRC in Black and Racialized Peoples' Health. She joins Dr. Tracie Risling, PhD, CNA president-elect, at the University of Calgary.
From left, Bukola Salami, CNA vice-president and Tracie Risling, CNA president-elect.
The CNA is the national and global professional voice of Canadian nursing, representing registered nurses, nurse practitioners, licensed and registered practical nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, retired nurses and nursing students across all 13 provinces and territories.
"I am so very proud that both the vice-president and president-elect of the CNA are from the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary," says Risling, associate dean, innovation and associate professor, UCalgary Nursing. "I have long admired the incredible depth and breadth of not only the research, but the leadership that Dr. Salami has and is achieving in her career. Beyond the award-winning science, it is the connectivity including a vast network of personal mentorship that Bukola has built that is truly an inspiration."
Salami's research and work focuses on the health of Black and racialized communities. She is also a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine.
Before coming to the University of Calgary, Salami was a full professor at the University of Alberta's Faculty of Nursing and former director of the Intersections of Gender Signature Area in the Office of the Vice President Research. She is one of the most published Black health researchers in Canada with around 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Her research portfolio ranges from African immigrant child health and immigrant mental health to health-care access for Black women, immigrant children, and Black youth mental health. She has been involved in over 90 funded studies totalling over $230 million.
At UCalgary, Salami is also a member of the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, the O'Brien Institute for Public Health, the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education.
"Canadians face racialized health inequalities which have a negative impact on the health of Black and racialized people. Racism plays a significant role in contributing to poor health outcomes, leading to a decrease in overall population health," says Salami.
To address this issue, she is conducting original research, developing collaborative action plans, building knowledge capacity (including training for early career researchers), and establishing networks with a goal of transforming the health outcomes of Black and racialized people in Canada.
She founded and leads the African Child and Youth Migration Network, a network of 42 scholars from four continents. In 2020, she founded the Black Youth Mentorship and Leadership Program, the first university-based fully interdisciplinary mentorship program for Black youths in Canada, which seeks to socially and economically empower Black high school youths to meaningfully contribute to Canadian society.
Read on to learn more about Dr. Bukola Salami.
