Hakique Virani

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About

Hakique Virani is a Royal College specialist in Public Health and Preventive Medicine and a Diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine. Both his public health and clinical work has been focused on special populations, including aboriginal communities, marginalized inner city patients, and incarcerated individuals.

As a Medical Officer of Health with the federal department of health, Dr. Virani led the Alberta public health response to the influenza pandemic of 2009 for the province's First Nations, achieving triple the provincial vaccination coverage for this population and deploying rapid flu assessment clinics using remote access health technology. He was recognized by the federal health minister for this work. In 2015, he championed the first naloxone distribution program on reserve in Canada in response to the opioid overdose crisis in Southern Alberta, which was the impetus for a province-wide program. Dr. Virani served as a member of Alberta’s Coalition on Prescription Drug Misuse from its inception, and remains involved with the CPSA in physician education on opioid use disorder, and the development of Standards and Guidelines for opioid dependency treatment.  He is currently the Medical Director of Metro City Medical Clinic in Edmonton and Calgary.

For his work in Addiction Medicine and First Nations Public Health he was named one of Avenue Magazine's Top 40 Under 40.

Hakique is a vocal advocate for public health, and is called upon regularly to comment in North American media on issues of health equity, social determinants of health, and substance use issues. He has written for the Toronto Star, CBC, the Huffington Post, VICE, Alberta Views, the Calgary Herald, the Boston Globe's STAT News, and the Globe and Mail. His clinical and public health work was featured in VICE media's feature-length documentary called Dopesick, which won a 2017 Canadian Screen Academy Award, a 2016 Digi Award, and was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award (2017).

Prior to a career in medicine, Hakique worked briefly as a TV news reporter, as well as with the Calgary Police Service in cultural education.

Some of his recent columns published by North American media outlets:

• Virani, H, Chaffin R. "Should all Drugs be Decriminalized." Alberta Views. 1 November 2018 (invited guest column)
• Juurlink D, Virani H. "The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs." Toronto Star. 15 April 2018 (opinion editorial)
• Virani, H. "Social issues affect us all whether we know it or not." Calgary Herald. 7 December 2017 (invited guest column) 
• Virani, H. "The surgeon general’s dismissal should alarm all doctors." STAT News. 3 May 2017 (opinion editorial)
• Virani, H. "Canada’s opioid crisis: it didn’t have to be this way." VICE News. 16 November 2016 (column)
  
• Virani H, Davis R, Juurlink D.  "�Long past time’ to act on Canada’s deadly opioid epidemic." CBC News. 20 October 2016 (opinion editorial)
  
• Virani, H. "As the opioid crisis shows, politics shouldn’t drive public health." Globe and Mail. 15 April 2016 (opinion editorial) 
  
• Virani, H. "Alberta’s fentanyl response is tragic. The solution is simple." Globe and Mail. 12 November 2015 (opinion editorial)
  
• Virani H, Forster I, Rahaman O. "Doctors: Alberta’s drug treatment falls short of demand." Calgary Herald. 28 March 2015 (opinion editorial)
  
• Virani H, Forster I. "Opioids: Addiction is not a disease of society’s margins." Huffington Post Canada. 10 April 2013. p 1 (feature blog post).