Anita Palepu
Scientist, MD, MPH, FRCPC, MACP, FCAHS
Dr. Anita Palepu is a Full-Time Professor in the Division of Internal Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and conducts her research at Advancing Health.
Research Interests
- Urban health
- Housing and homelessness
- Social determinants of health
- Substance use and addiction treatment
- Quality of life
Her research program falls under the broad umbrella of urban health research with a particular interest in persons who use drugs and those who experience unstable housing as they are vulnerable to poor health outcomes.
She is part of a network of Canadian researchers examining issues pertaining to housing, homelessness, and health, and is the site principal investigator for the Health and Housing in Transition Study (HHiT), which is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded, longitudinal study of 400 homeless and vulnerably housed persons in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Five years of data collection was completed in February 2014. She has been the UBC Department of Medicine Clinical Investigator Program Director since 2004.
As an Internal Medicine specialist at St. Paul’s Hospital, Dr. Palepu is active in teaching residents and medical students in both the inpatient and clinic setting. She was actively involved with the launch of an independent, open-access general medical journal Open Medicine and served as the Editor from 2007–2014. She has been an Associate Editor with the Annals of Internal Medicine since 2010. She was the President of the International Society of Urban Health in 2008 and is a former Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar.
Additional Affiliations
Media Coverage
- We gave $7,500 to people experiencing homelessness — here’s what happened next (Yahoo! News, September 2023)
- Tackling the science behind the long-term effects of COVID-19 (UBC Faculty of Medicine News, July 2021)
- Dr. Anita Palepu appointed as Head, UBC Department of Medicine (UBC Faculty of Medicine News, September 2019)
- Poverty action needed (The Province, September 2018)
- The effect of homelessness on health care use (UBC Faculty of Medicine News, December 2013)
- Opinion: Housing First program can help end homelessness (Vancouver Sun, October 2013)