Biography

Salah Mahmud, MD MSc PhD FRCP(c)

Salah Mahmud is a Canada Research Chair in Pharmacoepidemiology and Vaccine Evaluation, Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, Epidemiologist with CancerCare Manitoba and Medical Officer of Health and Epidemiology and Surveillance Lead for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

He completed graduate training in epidemiology (MSc) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK) and pharmacoepidemiology (PhD) at the University of Manitoba, and a post-doctoral fellowship in pharmacoepidemiology and cancer epidemiology at McGill University. He is currently the principal investigator on more than 14 grants funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Manitoba Health Research Council, Manitoba Medical Sciences Foundations, Manitoba Health and by industry sources.

Dr. Mahmud’s research is focused on cancer chemoprevention (the use of chemical agents to prevent or reverse carcinogenic progression to invasive cancer) and on understanding the role of inflammation and infections in cancer development. For several years, he has been investigating whether widely used pharmaceuticals (e.g., statins, anti-depressants, NSAIDs) could reduce the risk of major cancers (e.g., prostatic, colorectal, and cervical cancers) using observational pharmacoepidemiologic designs and the pharmacy and cancer registry databases of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec and other data sources.

He is also interested in other practical applications of pharmacoepidemiology (e.g., developing “real-time” post-marketing surveillance systems for drug and vaccine adverse events) and evaluating the safety and effectiveness of commonly used vaccines including the influenza and Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines. His other research interests include investigating the epidemiology and natural history of HPV, evaluating the impact of HPV vaccination on the effectiveness of Pap screening for cervical neoplasia, and evaluating the diagnostic performance of HPV testing as an alternative screening strategy for cervical neoplasia.

Dr. Mahmud’s areas of research expertise include design and analysis of longitudinal and repeated-measurement studies; meta-analysis; mathematical modeling of infectious diseases; using Monte Carlo simulation methods to estimate the effects of exposure and outcome measurement errors on the validity of epidemiologic studies; and developing statistical analysis tools (e.g., Epidata) for use by epidemiologists and public health practitioners.