CAAP’S Executive Membership comprises a Board of Directors and four specialized committees, each dedicated to addressing critical gaps and challenges in the fields of addictions and psychiatry. These committees are united by a shared mission: to foster collaboration and drive transformative, harmonious change in these historically fragmented disciplines. By harnessing the diverse expertise of their members, CAAP is carving out a unique niche within the Canadian healthcare landscape. This innovative approach is designed to deliver high-quality, outcome-oriented care for the most vulnerable populations - those living with concurrent mental health and substance use disorders. Through collective efforts, CAAP is committed to making a lasting impact and improving the lives of those they serve.
Dr. Michael Krausz is originally from Hamburg, Germany, where he was trained at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf as a registered nurse. Following this he completed a residency in Adult Psychiatry and his Doctor of Philosophy, where he examined the associations between psychosis and addictions. In the mid 1990s, he became a founding director of the Centre of Interdisciplinary Addiction Research at the University of Hamburg and retained directorship at the centre until 2004. As a founding director, he was responsible for the German Heroin Trial, the European Cocaine Project, and several other notable addiction-related trials. He also served as Editor-In-Chief of two well-established European scientific journals; Suchttherapie and European Addiction Research.
Dr. Krausz is a founding member of the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM), a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse (CCSA) and the e-Mental Health Steering Committee for the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), and is Section Chair of the Informatics and Telecommunications in Psychiatry and Addiction Psychiatry Sections of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and Co-Chiar of the Public Policy and Psychiatry Section, WPA.
Dr. Krausz relocated permanently to Vancouver, Canada in 2007, and from 2009-2012 he was the Medical Director of the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction with Vancouver Coastal Health. Currently, he is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Providence Health Care/UBC Leading Edge Endowment Fund (LEEF) B.C. Leadership Chair in Addiction Research, and a Founding Fellow of the UBC Institute of Mental Health.
As a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Health Evaluation & Outcome Sciences (CHÉOS) and head of the Addictions and Concurrent Disorders Group at CHÉOS, Dr. Krausz’s research explores the relationship between early life trauma, substance use disorders, and other mental illnesses. His research includes the At Home/Chez Soi Study, the B.C. Health of the Homeless Survey, and the Study to Assess Long-Term Opioid Maintenance Effectiveness (SALOME).
More recently, Dr. Krausz has extended his expertise to include e-mental health. The Bell Youth Mental Health IMPACT Project (2012) was Dr. Krausz’s first endeavour in this area. Bell Canada’s philanthropic support in the amount of $1 million as part of their Let’s Talk Initiative was critical seed funding in the development of a new mental health platform, WalkAlong.ca, designed to provide youth who are experiencing depression and anxiety with resources to help foster mental wellness. In 2014, he was recognized for his tireless research and advocacy related to substance use, mental health, and housing security with the City of Vancouver’s Healthy City for All Award of Excellence.
Dr. Vijay Seethapathy is the chief medical officer at BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services (BCMHSUS) as part of the dyad leadership team with chief operating officer, Jennifer Duff. He provides strategic and operational oversight for medical services across BCMHSUS programs and services including the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, Red Fish Centre for Mental Health and Addiction, Heartwood Centre for Women, Correctional Health Services, Forensic Regional Clinics and provincial specialized mental-health and substance-use programs. He is also a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, where he oversees the psychiatry residents’ addiction program.
He is one of very few psychiatrists in B.C. who specializes in treating patients with a combination of complex mental health and substance use disorders, known in the mental health community as concurrent disorders. He has a special interest in clinical systems redesign.
Vijay has bachelor’s degrees in medicine and surgery from India, and an executive master’s degree in business administration from Keele University in the UK. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Addiction Medicine, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada.
Dr. Tanguay is a psychiatrist who completed two fellowships, one in Addiction Medicine and Pain Medicine. He is a clinical assistant professor with the departments of Psychiatry and Surgery at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary.
He is the co-chair of the internationally recognized Alberta Pain Strategy and helps lead the Alberta Virtual Pain Program implementation. He is the co-founder and co-developer of the Community Rapid Access Addiction Medicine (RAAM) clinic for AHS where he works clinically.
Dr. Tanguay is member of the Calgary Police Commission, legislated to manage the annual budget ($568 million) as well as to establish policies providing for efficient and effective policing. He is a director for the Alberta Association of Police Governance and the Criminal Code Review Board. He is the Co-Chair of the Western Canadian Addiction Forum and Chair of the Canadian Addiction Counsel. Dr. Tanguay has been heavily involved in health policy including helping to lead the Alberta Psychedelic Legislative Committee and the Alberta Safe Supply Legislative Committee. He was a member of the Alberta Recovery Expert Advisory Panel directly advising the Alberta Minister of Addiction and Mental Health. He was a member of the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel for the Government of Alberta and was a member of the Supervised Consumption Review Committee. He also sits on the Policy Committee for the Canadian Society of Addiction medicine (CSAM) where he was a former director.
Dr. Tanguay has been recognized for his work and is the 2021 Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada recipient of the Early Career Leadership Award, was inducted into the University of Lethbridge Alumni Honour Society, and is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Dr. Tanguay has presented 114 invited, plenary, and keynote lectures on three continents speaking on policy, addiction, pain, and mental health. He has received $9,327,494 in operational and research grants. Academically, he is involved in research in trauma, addiction, chronic pain, opioids, cannabis, and psychedelics and is a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education at the University of Calgary.
Dr. Ignaszewski is a Harvard and UCSF trained psychiatrist with board certification in Adult, Addiction, and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Canada and the USA.
She is the Senior Medical Director of Substance Use and Concurrent Disorders and the Clinical Lead of the Substance Use Response and Facilitation (SURF) Service at BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital, and works as the Education Lead and as a Consulting Psychiatrist with the Complex Pain and Addiction Service (CPAS) at Vancouver General Hospital. She is also an early career researcher and a Research Scientist Co-Lead of the Substance Use Disorder Clinical Research Unit at the Hope to Health Research & Innovation Complex with the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. Dr. Ignaszewski is passionate about medical education and working with learners across the educational spectrum. Reducing the stigma of addiction and psychiatric conditions, and providing an understanding about the developmental perspective and impacts of social determinants of health on substance use disorders, and the intersection between addiction and concurrent disorders are areas of focus with learners and clinically.
Valerie Primeau, MD, FRCPC, is a bilingual psychiatrist practising in North Bay, Ontario. Passionate about quality improvement, leadership and advocacy, she currently holds the positions of North Bay Regional Health Centre (NBRHC) Medical Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Head of Service of Community Mental Health and Addictions. She has been actively involved in the treatment of concurrent disorders and led the NBRHC implementation of medically-supervised withdrawal management and the rural implementation of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Integrated Care Pathway for the treatment of alcohol use disorder and depression.
With an interest in offering treatment to vulnerable populations, Dr. Primeau is the physician lead for the Rapid Access Addiction Medicine (RAAM) clinic and the Early Intervention for Psychosis (EPI) program. She was a member of the Ontario Health EPI Task Group and is part of the ongoing EPI-SET research project with CAMH, which aims to disseminate the NAVIGATE evidence-based treatment model for EPI across Ontario. She was the recipient of the NOAMA Clinical Innovation Opportunities Funding for an ongoing local research project on Substance use stigma among first responders and emergency department staff. Keen on providing ongoing medical education, Dr. Primeau has presented at multiple provincial and national venues over the years. She was a past member of the Ontario Health Alcohol Use Disorder Quality Standard Advisory Committee and was the Clinical Lead for the Withdrawal Management Standards with Addictions and Mental Health Ontario (AMHO). She sits on the Executive Committee of the Ontario Psychiatric Association (OPA), the Policy Committee of the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) and is actively involved in the Section of Addiction Psychiatry at the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA).
The current public health emergency based on the opioid overdose crisis and a historic mortality due to a mental illness is a critical challenge. We all need to step up our response through:
The Canadian Academy for Addiction Psychiatry (CAAP) wants to attract every engaged professional in the field to strive towards outcome oriented collaboration to achieve high quality care and synergy caring for the most vulnerable.
