Ashley Wazana
Assistant Professor
Psychiatry
McGill University
Canada
Biography
Dr. Ashley Wazana is a clinician-scientist in the department of psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital. He was trained as a child psychiatrist at McGill and as an epidemiologist at Columbia University. He is the clinical and research director of an Early Childhood Disorders day hospital at the Jewish General Hospital as well as an investigator in projects at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, at the Douglas Institute of Mental Health and in international collaborations with France, Finland the United States. He currently holds the McGill Chair of Psychiatry's Early Career Researcher Award. Dr. Wazana is currently the Principal Investigator for the psychiatric outcomes of Dr Michael Meaney's Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment (MAVAN) project. His CIHR and March of Dimes funded project aims to identify how genotypes in the Serotonin, Dopamine and Glucocorticoid pathways and which early maternal experiences interact to modify the trajectory for anxious and depressive psychopathology of children with prenatal adversity. Low birth weight and prenatal maternal depression are two conditions of adversity used to test competing models of developmental psychopathology about the role of prenatal experience (determinants or susceptibility-factors). He is also faculty in the McGill Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry and is involved in a community-based intervention to prevent maladjustment of Aboriginal youth. He has also been extensively involved in research, teaching and policy development in the relation between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry, a domain for which he has been called to testify as an expert witness. He was a member of the Consensus Panel which developed the AACAP's recent conflict of interest guidelines. He is currently the chair of the Research and Scientific Program committee of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Research Interest
Child psychiatry, developmental psychopathology, gene by environment interactions
Publications
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A DRD4 gene by maternal sensitivity interaction predicts risk for overweight or obesity in two independent cohorts of preschool children. Levitan RD, Jansen P, Wendland B, Tiemeier H, Jaddoe VW, Silveira PP, Kennedy JL, Atkinson L, Fleming A, Sokolowski M, Gaudreau H, Steiner M, Dubé L, Hamilton J, Moss E, Wazana A, Meaney M.
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An Attachment-Based Model of the Relationship Between Childhood Adversity and Somatization in Children and Adults. Maunder RG, Hunter JJ, Atkinson L, Steiner M, Wazana A, Fleming AS, Moss E, Gaudreau H, Meaney MJ, Levitan RD.
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The dopamine D4 receptor gene, birth weight, maternal depression, maternal attention, and the prediction of disorganized attachment at 36 months of age: A prospective gene×environment analysis. Graffi J, Moss E, Jolicoeur-Martineau A, Moss G, Lecompte V, Pascuzzo K, Babineau V, Gordon-Green C, Mileva-Seitz VR, Minde K, Sassi R, Steiner M, Kennedy JL, Gaudreau H, Levitan R, Meaney MJ, Wazana A; MAVAN project.
