Shelley Deeks

Dr. Shelley Deeks, MD, MHSc, FRCPC, FFAFPM, is a Canadian public health expert who is the chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization. Her advertised "specialities include communicable disease control, outbreak investigations, vaccine safety, epidemiology and program evaluation." She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and the Australian Faculty of Public Health Medicine. Deeks was the executive lead in Ontario's COVID-19 pandemic response in 2020 in her role at Public Health Ontario. During the SARS outbreak of 2003, Deeks was working at Health Canada and then moved to the Public Health Agency of Canada in infectious diseases. In 2009, Deeks joined Public Health Ontario, where she served as chief of Communicable Diseases, Emergency Preparedness and Response. She participated as a member of the Ontario Vaccine Safety Surveillance Working Group. She also contributed to a presentation on increasing uptake of adult immunizations presented by Immunize Canada in 2015. At some time prior to 2020, Deeks was appointed chief health protection officer of Ontario. Deeks delivered several presentations at the 2018 Canadian Immunization Conference in Ottawa, on subjects including vaccine development, adverse events following immunization, HPV vaccination for gay men, risks of un-immunized Ontario children, non-medical exemptions to vaccination, and MMR vaccines. The same year, she also presented at the Ontario Public Health Convention on the topics of the epidemiology of varicella, waning measles immunity in infants, and mumps activity in Ontario. She has served on several international committees related to vaccination programs. From October 2018 until October 2020, she was a member of the Vaccine Innovation Prioritisation Strategy (VIPS) Steering Committee under Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. She continues to serve on the World Health Organization's (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts Polio Working Group. In 2020, Deeks left the Ontario Ministry of Health one month after she "revealed that the government ignored Public Health Ontario's recommendations on COVID-19.