Dr. Monique Gignac

Dr. Monique Gignac is scientific co-director and a senior scientist at the Institute for Work & Health. She is also a professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and an affiliate scientist at the Krembil Research Institute, part of the University Health Network.

Gignac’s research expertise is in the areas of health and social psychology, including health models of disability. Her research examines psychosocial factors like stress, coping, adaptation and communication, and their importance in understanding the impact of chronic diseases on the lives of adults across the life course. In particular, her work focuses on ways to enable people with chronic disabling conditions to maintain involvement in employment and other valued roles and activities, as well as on facilitators and barriers to working with a disabling health condition.

Gignac's research program is strongly collaborative. She works with clinicians, epidemiologists, health economists, sociologists and health psychologists. Study designs in her research program span community health surveys, qualitative research, measurement design and evaluation, and analyses of population health datasets.

Gignac has received recognition for her research with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Award (2013); a recognition award for outstanding leadership and research from the Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence (2011); Distinguished Scholar (2013), Lecturer (2014) and Addie Thomas Service (2019) Awards from the international Association of Rheumatology Professionals (ARP); and recognition for mentorship from the Health Care, Technology and Place (HCTP) Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategic Research Training Program (2015).