Professor Malcolm King PhD

Professor Community Health and Epidemiology

Malcolm King, PhD, FCAHS, is a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Ontario). He completed his PhD in polymer chemistry at McGill University in Montreal along with research fellowships at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and the Meakins-Christie Laboratories at McGill University. He has held faculty positions at McGill University (MRC Scholar), the University of Alberta (U of A) as an Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) Senior Scholar, Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of Saskatchewan (USask). From 1993 to 2009, Malcolm served as Chair of the U of A’s Aboriginal Healthcare Careers Committee. During this time, they graduated 56 Indigenous medical doctors and 17 Indigenous dentists. Many of those Indigenous graduates now serve Indigenous rural and urban communities, and some have become involved in health research and as mentors. From 1995 to 2012, Malcolm employed about 25 Indigenous students in summer research projects. Malcolm was an inaugural member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Governing Council from 2000 to 2004. He subsequently served on the CIHR Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health Advisory Board (Chair; 2005 to 2008). He served on the Board of Directors of the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research from 2004 to 2016. From 2017 to 2022, he served as the Chair of the Diabetes Action Canada Steering Council, a CIHR Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Network. From 2001 to 2009, Malcolm served as Principal Investigator for the Alberta ACADRE (Aboriginal Capacity and Development Research Environment) Network, a training program for Indigenous health research funded by the CIHR Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health. During this time, he supported more than 40 postgraduate research trainees, as well as 20 community-based research projects. Funding for continuation of the program to 2010 and beyond was awarded through the CIHR NEAHR (Network Environments for Aboriginal Health Research) program. While at U of A and SFU from 2009 to 2016, Malcolm served as Scientific Director of CIHR’s Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health. During this time, he led CIHR in the development of a national health research agenda aimed at improving wellness and achieving health equity for Indigenous peoples, Métis and Inuit in Canada. As a member of U of A’s School of Public Health and in collaboration with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Malcolm co-led the development of a public health research training program aimed at providing the skills to carry out intervention health research by and with indigenous communities. This work continued in his position at SFU, where he co-developed a course on Indigenous Health in Canada and supervised graduate students and other trainees in related endeavours. Since October 2017, he has served as Professor of Community Health and Epidemiology at USask and Scientific Director of the Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research (SCPOR). He succeeded in leading SCPOR through its five-year renewal process in 2021. Malcolm contributes to numerous councils and boards that support health research and policy across Canada. Malcolm’s areas of research interests include respiratory health issues among Indigenous peoples, health systems research in relation to Indigenous health, the social determination of Indigenous health and wellness, airborne disease transmission and chronic obstructive lung disease. Malcolm is the author of more than 250 scientific papers, many of which deal with mucus clearance in lung disease. His research was, and is, supported by research grants from CIHR. He has supervised many health research trainees including 40 graduate students, 25 postdoctoral fellows and many other community-based researchers. His international Indigenous health interests include improving Indigenous wellness through health workforce development and provision of culturally appropriate care, and developing Indigenous health indicators to monitor progress in programs aimed at achieving wellness and health equity. In 1999, he received the Alberta Lung Association Lorraine Award of Excellence in Research and the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Medical Research. In 2003, he received the U of A Board of Governors’ Award of Excellence. He was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2016. In 2021, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2025, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws from York University. Malcolm is currently the co-lead of Pewaseskwan (the Indigenous Wellness Research Group) and serves as Indigenous lead or co-lead on several national health research networks, including CANTRAIN, ENRICH, IMPaCT, RareKids-CAN, AVA, CHFA and BHI. He continues to work with Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan and elsewhere on research to assist them in their wellness journeys, including such topics as research ethics, data sovereignty, infrastructure and governance. He is a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation advisory committee on health and wellness and recently returned to his home community to live and work, mostly virtually, on matters of Indigenous health and wellness.

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