Timothy Hoff, Ph.D. is Professor of Management, Healthcare Systems, and Health Policy in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business and School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Green-Templeton College. Professor Hoff is the founder and director of the undergraduate health care management and consulting concentration at Northeastern. Before going into academia, he worked for a decade in primary care administration and as a health care consultant. His most recent book is Searching for the Family Doctor: Primary Care on the Brink, published by Johns Hopkins University Press (2022). He has published three other scholarly books on primary care and the health care workforce, and over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles. He writes for popular press outlets such as Harvard Business Review, STAT, Medical Economics, Medscape, and The Washington Post. Currently, he is a member of the STFM’s Task Force on Professionalism in Family Medicine Education. His health care research has won national awards from the American Sociological Association, Academy of Management, and Society for Applied Anthropology. He is also the 2022 recipient of the Myron Fottler Exceptional Service Award from the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management. 

Professor Timothy Caulfield is an unrivalled communicator who debunks myths and assumptions about innovation in the health sector — from research on stem cells to diets and alternative medicine — for the benefit of the public and decision-makers. For over 20 years, he was the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and is currently a professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health and the Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta.

Caulfield has been involved in a variety of interdisciplinary research endeavours that have led him to publish more than 400 academic articles. His research focuses on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science, and public health policy issues. He has won numerous academic, science communication, and writing awards, and is a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Caulfield also writes frequently for the popular press and is the author of four bestselling books: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness, and Happiness; Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash; Relax, Dammit!: A User’s Guide to the Age of Anxiety; and his most recent, The Certainty Illusion.

In addition, Caulfield is the co-founder of the science engagement initiative, #ScienceUpFirst. He has also hosted and produced several documentaries, including the award-winning television show, A User’s Guide to Cheating Death, which has aired in over 60 countries and is currently streaming on Netflix in North America.

We are members of the Pacific Research Collective, a collaboration of the Pacific People’s Health Advisory Group (PPHAG), the Pacific Practice-Based Research Network (PPBRN), and researchers from the Faculty of Medical and Health Science at the University of Auckland. Rose Lamont, a high school teacher of Samoan descent, leads PPHAG, a group of Pacific people of different ethnicities and backgrounds from South Auckland. Dr Maryann Heather, also Samoan, is a general practitioner with the Pacific primary care provider Etu Pasifika South Auckland, a member of the PPBRN, and a senior lecturer in Pacific Health, University of Auckland. Dr Malakai Ofanoa is an associate professor and Drs Samuela Ofanoa and Siobhan Tu’akoi are research fellows in Pacific Health, and Felicity Goodyear-Smith is a general practitioner and professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Auckland. Malakai, Samuela and Siobhan are Tongan, and Felicity is the pālangi (non-Pacific) member of our group. Together we bring to the Collective a vast range of community knowledge, clinical skills and experience, and research expertise. Our research questions are generated by PPHAG and PPBRN, and we co-design our research projects collectively. Our work is guided by Pacific models such as fa’afaletui, whereby knowledge from different perspectives (from the top of the mountain, top of the tree and from the man in the canoe fishing) are woven together give a complete story. Current projects address interventions for managing gout and preventing rheumatic fever, both prevalent conditions in Pacific peoples.