Avram Denburg

Avram Denburg is a paediatric oncologist and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research doctoral fellow in health policy at McMaster University.  His clinical, research, and advocacy pursuits are impelled by a recognition of, and a desire to attenuate, global and local disparities in child health and protection.

Avram holds an undergraduate degree in history, philosophy, and political science from the University of Toronto. He completed medical school at McMaster University, after which he undertook a post-graduate medical residency in paediatrics and a clinical fellowship in haematology/oncology at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children. Avram is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and of the American Academy of Pediatrics. As a Commonwealth scholar, he obtained a master's of science in health policy, planning, and financing from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  He trained at Harvard University as a fellow of the National Institutes of Health-funded Pediatric Scientist Development Program.

Avram's research explores the intersection of ethics and child health policy.  In the past, his work has focused on issues of access to essential medicines for children, the social determinants of child health and development, international health research ethics, and the ethics of priority-setting in health systems. His current research examines normative and methodological issues in the assessment of child health technologies, especially pharmaceutical policy and drug coverage decisions for children.

Avram is a board member of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, the chair of the Essential Medicines Working Group for the International Society of Pediatric Oncology, and the co-chair of the Global Health Ethics Collaborative at the University of Toronto's Joint Centre for Bioethics. While at Harvard, he chaired the Childhood Cancer Committee of the Global Task Force for Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control, an international advocacy organization aimed at reducing global disparities in cancer outcomes. As a pediatrician, Avram has worked with and learned from a diversity of marginalized children and youth, including villagers in Zimbabwe and Tanzania, Maori adolescents in New Zealand, First Nations youth in Northern Canada, Karen refugee children in Toronto, and children with cancer in the southern Philippines.  Avram co-founded a paediatric clinic for refugee and immigrant children in Toronto that provides care for vulnerable children who lack access to publicly insured health services.