S. Michelle Driedger

S. Michelle Driedger received her BA (Honours) in 1995 (University of Winnipeg), her MA in 1997 (Carleton University) and her PhD in 2001 (McMaster University). She was an Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Ottawa from 2002-2005 until she was recruited for a Tier II Canada Research Chair in the Department of Community Health Sciences (now the College of Community and Global Health) at the University of Manitoba in 2006.

Dr. Driedger is currently a Professor in the College of Community and Global Health, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in the Academy of Social Sciences, and a former CIHR Tier II Canada Research Chair in Health Risk Communication. She is a proud Red River Métis citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF), Bison Local. A health geographer by training, she works in full partnership with the MMF Health and Wellness Department on Red River Métis health research. She is a leader in decolonizing and partnership-based research, focusing on the science and practice of effective risk communication under conditions of uncertainty. She studies how trust in public health and primary care providers may be fostered by examining public perspectives on the credibility of the source of the communication, what recommendations are communicated, and how members of the general population and Métis citizens make decisions to accept (or not) those recommendations to protect themselves and their families. She examines these issues using different case studies with an intersectional lens regarding gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic conditions, and systemic racism from colonial experiences of Indigenous Peoples, like the Red River Métis. She brings a wealth of experiences in evaluating public uptake of public health recommendations, including vaccines, during pandemic H1N1 and COVID-19.