Regiane Garcia
Title: Adjunct Professor
Biography:
Dr. Regiane (Regi) Garcia is a lawyer, legal scholar, and policy specialist with more than 15 years of experience at the intersection of health and human rights, health law, social policy, and governance innovation, grounded in a steadfast commitment to equity and social justice. She currently serves as a Senior Policy Analyst with the British Columbia Ministry of Health, working on the province’s response to the overdose crisis.
She also serves as a Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Her research examines the legal, privacy, security and ethical dimensions of data sharing governance in the context of machine learning and learning health systems. Drawing on qualitative and empirical legal methods, she works to inform equitable, rights-based approaches to data sharing system design.
Regi holds a PhD in Law from the University of British Columbia, where her dissertation examined participatory governance in Brazil’s public health system and its implications for population health outcomes. She also holds an LLM from the University of Toronto and a Law Degree from Mackenzie University in São Paulo. Regi was admitted to the Brazilian Bar in 1997 and practiced as a litigator prior to pursuing graduate studies in Canada.
Her current research includes international and multidisciplinary collaborations, including: the development of privacy-preserving frameworks for cross-border health data sharing in the Cascadia Corridor; an investigation into the intersections of health and justice in Vancouver’s Downtown Community Court; and an exploration of stigma associated with neglected tropical diseases in Ghana.
Publications:
Kenyon, K. H., Garcia, R., & Chukwudozie, A. (2024). “Client health is part of my job”: A qualitative study of attitudes and experiences of legal personnel in British Columbia’s Downtown Community Court. Journal of Community Safety and Well-Being, 9(2), 109–113. https://doi.org/10.35502/jcswb.372
Bubela, T., Garcia, Regiane et. al. “Towards a Proportionate and Risk-Based Approach to Federated Data Access in Canada.” (2023) Canadian Institute for Advanced Research - CIFAR AI Insights Policy Brief. Available: https://cifar.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CIFAR-AI-Insights-Federated-Learning.pdf
Kwarteng, A., Garcia, Regiane, et al. “Knowledge and perceptions of lymphatic filariasis patients in selected hotspot endemic communities in southern Ghana.” (2023) PLOS global public health, 3(10), e0002476.
Garcia, Regiane et al. “Court as a health intervention to advance Canada’s achievement of the sustainable development goals: A multi-pronged analysis of Vancouver’s Downtown Community Court.” (2019) Global Health. 15(80):1-14.
Garcia, Regiane and Kenyon, Kristi H. “A Review of Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World edited by Benjamin M. Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin.” (2019) Osgoode Hall Law Journal. 56(1):223-230.
Garcia, Regiane, “Expanding the Right-to-Health Debate – Citizens’ Participation in the Organization of the Health System as a Cornerstone of the Right to Health in Brazil” (2018) Health and Human Rights Journal. 20(1):163-172.
Garcia, Regiane, “Nós Precisamos Falar sobre Métodos de Interpretação Constitucional e o Papel do Direito Democrático à Saúde para a Construção Social do SUS que Queremos” [“We Need to Talk about Constitutional Interpretation Canons and the Role of the Democratic Right to Health in Building the Health System We Want”] (2017) Ensaios & Diálogos em Saúde Coletiva 5 art. 4.
Garcia, Regiane, “A Governance Approach to Agricultural Genomics Intellectual Property–Regulatory Complex.” In Emily Marden, R. Nelson Godfrey and Rachael Manion, eds., The Intellectual Property–Regulatory Complex: Overcoming Barriers to Innovation in Agricultural Genomics. UBC Press, 2016.
Kenyon, Kristi H. and Garcia, Regiane. “Exploring Human Rights-Based Activism as a Social Determinant of Health: Insights from Brazil and South Africa.” (2016) Journal of Human Rights Practice. 8(2):198-218.