July 17, 2012
Dr. Eric Dewailly’s early professional career included a position in community health at CHUL’s Community Health Department in Quebec City, as a consulting physician (1987 to 1989), then as the coordinator of the Quebec City area environmental health team until 1998. Since 1998, he has headed up the CHUQ Public Health Research Unit (CHUL building. He has also been a full professor in environmental health at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine (Faculty of medicine) at Laval University since 1997.
Dr. Dewailly’s research focuses mainly on the impact of oceans on human health: such as the contamination of the marine food chain and the exposure of fishing communities to heavy metals and organochlorines; the effect of these contaminants on the reproductive, immune, and neurological systems; marine toxins, etc. He has made over 500 scientific presentations and published over 200 scientific peer reviewed articles and has received over $80 million in grants. From 2000 to 2006 he was on the scientific board of the CIHR Institute for Aboriginal People’s Health. He is also the director of the CIHR funded Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health. He has responsibility in various scientific networks including: ArcticNet, Québec Océan, CIHR Network for autism, AquaNet, Global Health Research Initiative, FRSQ network in environmental health, FRSQ network in population health.
Dr. Dewailly has participated to the Coastal-GOOS panel of UNESCO and various expert panels of the World Health Organization. He represents Canada on the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program/Health, is co-chair of the environmental group of the International Union for Circumpolar Health, and heads up the medical section of the International Center for Ocean and Human Health at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (now BIOS). He has been nominated in 2008 adjunct professor at the Institut Louis Malardé in Papeete (French Polynesia). Since 2002 he has served as the director of the Atlantis mobile laboratory program funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.
He received a degree in medicine from the University of Lille (France, 1982), then completed specialized studies in public health (CES, Amiens, 1983). He did his residency in community health (Laval University, 1983-85), and holds a Master’s Degree in epidemiology (Laval University, 1987) and a PhD in toxicology (Lille, 1990).