Featured Member: Dr. Bukola Salami

Dr. Bukola Salami is a National Newcomer Navigation Network (N4) member, an N4 Subject Matter Expert (SME), and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta. Dr. Salami also has lived experience as a former newcomer to Canada – originally from Nigeria, she first came to Canada as high school student in Grade 11. Dr. Salami went on to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Windsor, followed by a Master of Nursing and PhD, both from the University of Toronto. During Dr. Salami’s doctoral research, she began to explore the migration of nurses trained in the Philippines to Ontario through Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program. Dr. Salami also worked as a pediatric oncology nurse and interprofessional educator at the New Immigrant Support Network of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto prior to delving into academia. 

Following her move to Alberta, Dr. Salami broadened her research scope to focus on the health  of temporary foreign workers in the province who work in a variety of industries. Her research also expanded to include immigrant and child youth health (including mental health), a research area that she continues to focus on today. Other research areas include Black and African immigrant health and the mental health of immigrants, as well as the ongoing focus on international nurse migration. Dr. Salami is also active internationally, especially in West Africa. Additionally, she founded and currently leads an African migrant child research network of 30 researchers from four continents. 

Dr. Salami is passionate about using her research to address health disparities, especially amongst Black Canadians and African Canadians, reflecting, “what motivates me is making an impact...for example, I have a Black mentorship program...one of the things that really warms the heart, when you know that Black youth are able to succeed because of what you've invested in the process.” In 2020, Dr. Salami founded the Black Youth Mentorship and Leadership Program at the University of Alberta. This program was the first of its kind in Canada and seeks to socially and economically empower Black high school youth to contribute meaningfully to Canadian society.  

Dr. Salami cites the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice movement of the past two years as bringing to light many existing societal inequities and increasing the focus on racism as a social determinant of health, as well as the importance of disaggregated data. The COVID-19 pandemic has also underscored the importance of immigrant mental health, a topic that Dr. Salami has been exploring for several years. Dr. Salami examined mental health among immigrants to Canada in her 2017 paper, Migration and social determinants of mental health: Results from the Canadian Health Measures Survey. In this paper and in her other work, Dr. Salami advocates for health and social policies that address social determinants of health among immigrants, especially sense of community belonging, income, and employment. 

Looking towards the future, Dr. Salami is committed to moving the needle forward on addressing health disparities, saying “I'm also looking forward to making additional impact both nationally and also internationally in terms of immigrant health and the health and well-being of racialized communities in Canada, and translating some of that work both nationally and internationally.”