Marcus Lem

Biography

 Dr. Marcus Lem is the Director of the Public Health and Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the UBC and Senior Medical Advisor in Public Health Policy for Addiction and Overdose Prevention and Treatment at the BC Centre for Disease Control. Dr. Lem attended McMaster University Medical School and completed his MHSc in Public Health and Epidemiology and residency in Community Medicine at UBC. He was trained in aerospace and diving medicine at the Defence and Civil Institute for Environmental Medicine, and worked as a federal field epidemiologist in the Office of Public Health Security and the TB Prevention and Control Division of Health Canada. He was on the joint Health Canada – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team investigating SARS in Toronto in 2003, and served as a short-term consultant with UNICEF. From 2004 to 2007, Dr. Lem was the national Communicable Disease Control Specialist and TB Consultant for the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (FNIHB), and represented FNIHB on the Canadian TB Committee and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization. Subsequently, he held senior medical and executive positions with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada and was the Medical Health Officer for the Fraser Valley. Dr. Lem’s clinical preventive medicine practice focusses on non-pharmacologic management of chronic pain syndromes. Dr. Lem is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and a Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. Chair, Health Officers Council of British Columbia

Research Interest

Dr. Lem’s current work focuses on the development of policies and guidelines to address the current opioid crisis, including overdose prevention and supervised consumption services, opioid medication policy and occupational health and safety for health care workers and first responders.