Karen Yeates is a graduate of Queen’s Medical School and received Internal Medicine training in Toronto. She then completed a fellowship in Nephrology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario combined with a Master in Public Health from Harvard University. She is co-founder and co-director of the Queen’s University School of Medicine Office of Global Health and is a clinician-researcher with a global health research focus in ‘mHealth’ and how it can improve access to prevention, detection and treatment for non-communicable disease (hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and cancer).
Dr. Yeates is interested in improving access to care for underserviced populations in Canada and sub-Saharan Africa. Her current projects include country coordinator for The PURE Study Tanzania which is the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology Study that will follow 2000 participants for more than 10 years in a global cohort to measure the impact of lifestyle and environment on development of chronic disease. She is also the country lead for The International Polypill Study, a primary prevention study on cardiovascular disease in Tanzania. Dr. Yeates is a principal investigator on a recently awarded CIHR-Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases grant ‘DREAM-GLOBAL’ that is focused on the use of mobile phones to reduce hypertension in rural Aboriginal communities in Canada and, in Northern Tanzania. She was recently awarded the Rising Stars in Global Health award from Grand Challenges Canada that will use smartphones to screen for cervical cancer and is the principal investigator on another Rising Stars grant from Grand Challenges Canada that will scale up the use of mobile phones to distribute insecticidal treated bed-nets for malaria and anti-hypertensive medications in Tanzania.