Heather Deehan

Ms. Deehan started her career in public health as a Public Health Nurse and Nurse Practitioner, working in rural, urban and remote and isolated settings. Following graduate studies in Community Health and Epidemiology, she worked for Health Canada, leading the development of a network of immunization registries and vaccine inventory management systems to better secure and monitor the use of vaccines in Canada. Following the SARS outbreak in 2004, Ms. Deehan served in various leadership roles in the Public Health Agency of Canada, including pandemic preparedness and response as Executive Secretary of the Pandemic Response Oversight Committee in 2009, and monitoring and surveillance of vaccine preventable diseases and outbreak response as Chief, Vaccine Preventable Diseases. In 2014, she took on the role of Chief, Vaccine Centre with UNICEF, delivering on the ambitious goal to achieve vaccine security: access to safe, affordable supply to support national immunization programmes and outbreak response to over 100 developing countries throughout the world. Ms. Deehan re-joined PHAC in August 2020 to support the COVID-19 Vaccine Roll-out Task Force and national vaccine logistics and distribution, and is now building on the lessons learned from that experience, leading a multi-disciplinary team to assure timely access to vaccines and therapeutics.