Dr. Kevin D. Shield is a senior scientist at the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and an associate professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. He also leads the World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Collaborating Centre in Addiction and Mental Health at CAMH.
Dr. Shield’s work has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the 2018 CIHR-IPPH Trailblazer Award in Population and Public Health Research (Early Career category). Additionally, Dr. Shield has been ranked among the top 0.1% of scientific researchers globally by citation count, as listed on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers lists for 2022 and 2023.
Areas of Research
Dr. Shield's multidisciplinary public health surveillance research programs generate scientific data to inform individuals, clinicians, and policymakers on how to mitigate the public health harms caused by alcohol and other drugs. These programs include:
- Assessing the relationship between alcohol consumption and the occurrence of communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, and injuries through primary and secondary epidemiological data analysis, and using this information to develop guidelines on alcohol and health.
- Measuring alcohol consumption, the prevalence of alcohol use disorders, and alcohol-attributable harms at the individual, regional, national, and global levels (see the Global Information System on Alcohol and Health).
- Evaluating the effectiveness of public health policies, such as taxation, screening and brief interventions, and increasing access to pharmaceutical treatments for alcohol use disorders, in reducing alcohol-related harms.
Dr. Shield's research is funded by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [USA], and the World Health Organization.
Publications
Dr. Shield has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and reports.
View Dr. Shield’s publications on Google Scholar.