Dr. Aslam Anis is a Professor and the Director at the School of Population and Public Health (SPPH) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Since 2006, Dr. Anis has served as the Director of the Centre for Advancing Health Outcomes, a renowned multidisciplinary health outcomes research unit at Providence Health Care (PHC). The Centre is jointly affiliated with Providence Research and the UBC Faculty of Medicine. He is also the National Co-Director of the CIHR Pan-Canadian Network for HIV and STBBI Clinical Trials Research (CTN+).
As one of Canada’s most distinguished health economists, Dr. Anis has conducted numerous studies assessing the impact of various types of regulatory instruments and policies on the pharmaceutical marketplace in Canada. He has achieved international recognition for his seminal contributions to the fields of pharmacoeconomics, pharmaceutical industry regulation, and drug pricing. Dr. Anis currently oversees economic analysis and health services research activities across Providence Health Care, with scholars who trained under Dr. Anis operating across Advancing Health, CTN, the Heart and Lung Institute (HLI), and the Collaboration for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) in UBC’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
In a career spanning more than 25 years, Dr. Anis has achieved international recognition for his seminal contributions toward the development of scientific knowledge across multiple and diverse health disciplines. His work has been instrumental in shaping economic policies in Canada, notably those governing access to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for persons living with HIV/AIDS. Dr. Anis was among the first scholars worldwide to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of ART, and he has published widely in the peer-reviewed literature on health resource use and costs among HIV/AIDS patients treated and not treated with ART. Research by Dr. Anis in the area of pharmaceutical pricing policies in Canada has also attracted worldwide attention since the 1990s, and he continues to publish on the economic impact of changing drug price regulations. Dr. Anis’s expertise in health economics as pertaining to the pharmaceutical industry encompasses the relationship between government regulations and corporate behaviour, competition policy, patent infringement and international trade in pharmaceuticals. Dr. Anis has extensive experience conducting cost-effectiveness studies of new drugs, especially biologic therapies for the treatment of inflammatory arthritis, and he regularly consults with industry and governments in the context of formulary approval decisions. More recently, Dr. Anis has collaborated on groundbreaking work in B.C., demonstrating the safety and cost-effectiveness of alternative treatment for people with chronic opioid use disorder.
From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Anis served as a member of the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) HIV/AIDS Research Advisory Committee, whose mandate is to make recommendations to the Institute of Infection and Immunity regarding research priorities for HIV/AIDS. Dr. Anis also served on the Public Health Agency of Canada and CIHR Special Planning Committee to review the Federal Initiative on HIV/AIDS in Canada from 2006 to 2007. Provincially, Dr. Anis has served in various capacities at the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR), including its Research Advisory Council. Dr. Anis consults widely with federal, provincial, and private agencies, including Health Canada, the BC Ministry of Health, Industry Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, and Canadian and international pharmaceutical manufacturers. He actively participates in several knowledge transfer activities, including participation on government panels and involvement with consumer associations. Dr. Anis has published more than 220 peer-reviewed papers and garnered in excess of $180 million in peer-reviewed research funding.