Cathy Slavik is a PhD candidate in Health Geography at McMaster University. She is a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her research project on health risk communication and cancer risk perceptions.

Since obtaining her Master’s of Public Health from the University of Toronto in 2016, she has also been a researcher for the Occupational Cancer Research Centre at Ontario Health (formerly CancerCare Ontario) where she specializes in analyzing the geographic patterns of occupational and environmental exposures to cancer-causing agents across Canada. It was this work that led to her doctoral research on risk communication with the aims of improving cancer risk messaging and addressing knowledge gaps around the intersections between geography and health communication.