Our Team

Who We Are

At IPPNWC we are a non-partisan organization, our mission is to teach, research, and address our purposes below from a health perspective. For IPPNWC education and advocacy go in hand. Both encourage and empower the other. When we educate others on the health and consequences of overarching violence we are also raising awareness, thereby supporting informed accurate knowledge so others can use their voices and never have to deal with the consequences of nuclear proliferation. 

Our Purpose

To Teach, Research and Address:    

  1. The health consequences of violence, armed conflict, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.

  2.  The health consequences associated with energy resources and armed conflict.

  3.  Methods of nonviolent conflict resolution.

  4. The promotion of social justice in a sustainable world

Our Board of Directors

  • Secretary
    Maureen is a physiotherapist, educator and peace builder.

    Through her involvement as a volunteer with SGI Canada, bringing educational exhibits in support of the UN sustainable development goals to schools, Maureen became increasingly aware of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. Seeing the impact of youth engagement with the exhibit Everything you Treasure : Freeing the World From Nuclear Weapons, Maureen co- founded the International Youth Nuclear Peace Summit in 2019.

    Reaching out to like minded organizations, in support of this initiative, Maureen connected with the IPPNWC and joined their board in 2020. She became Secretary in 2021.

    Maureen continues to promote youth engagement and education and is presently involved in co- chairing the Youth Nuclear Peace Days of Action 2023.

  • Board Member

    Dr Jonathan Down is a recently retired Developmental Paediatrician and lives in Victoria, BC. He became a member of IPPNW in 1986, and the same year founded a local chapter of Project Ploughshares in Manotick, Ontario. Like many, he made the mistake of assuming that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR would eventually lead to peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons. He stepped away from activism for many years but following a meeting with Dr Mary-Wynne Ashford he rejoined the movement. The two formed a teaching partnership giving peace talks in local high schools and community venues gathering support for the Ban Treaty. Their work was acknowledged by the 2019 Distinguished Achievement Award from Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

    The recent setting of the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight requires all hands on deck for humanity. No stepping away this time.

  • Treasurer

    Charles King is a recently retired general practitioner from Crescent Beach BC. He has been involved with IPPNWC since it’s early days in the 1980’s as a Board member. The scourge of war and violence, and particularly nuclear weapons, and the neglected humanitarian and environmental crises, have been constant motivations for activism throughout his medical career

  • Board Member

    Erica Frank, MD, MPH, FACPM is a physician and Professor in the School of Population and Public Health and the Department of Family Medicine, in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Frank’s research examines globally-scaled education interventions: she is the Founder/Inventor (in 2001) of NextGenU.org (with learners registered in every country for free education and certificates), Founder/Principal Investigator of the Healthy Doc = Healthy Patient initiative (demonstrating and building on the strong and consistent relationships between physicians’ personal and clinical practices), former Co-Editor-in-Chief of Preventive Medicine, Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the 2016 nominee of the Canadian Medical Association and the American College of Preventive Medicine to be Director-General of the World Health Organization. More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Frank

  • President

    John lives in Squamish, British Columbia. He has had a diverse and varied career in medicine. This has included full service family practice in rural Newfoundland and Manitoba, a stint as the Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Manitoba. Following this was a short period as the Chief Medical Officer of a small Caribbean country. On return he directed the residency program in family medicine at the University of Manitoba while working for the J Hildes Northern Medical Unit.

    This led to an interest in Indigenous health and work with an Indigenous organization in Sioux Lookout in northwestern Ontario with a focus on obstetrics. Recipient of a fellowship in Women’s Health from the College of Family Physicians of Canada John, in mid-career learned the skills to do caesarean sections to support the re-opening of birthing services for families in Sioux Lookout zone. He continues this work, parttime, and has been able to volunteer with the International Women’s Health Program of SOGC. Most recently he has been involved with the development and the delivery of an ALARM International Program for health care administrators in Uganda and Ethiopia

    Happily married to Geraldine for over 40 years, they have 2 adult children, and 3 grandchildren.

    Interests include sailing, skiing, mountain biking and music

  • Board Member

    Nancy Covington, BSc (maths and physics), MD, is a retired Halifax family physician. Growing up in Ottawa during the Cold War era, Nancy was sensitized at a young age to the horrors of a possible nuclear war as she watched her neighbours build bomb shelters. Later she viewed a nuclear weapons catastrophe as the ultimate human-made public health issue. She is a long standing member of both Voice of Women and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada including its forerunners.

    A highlight for Nancy was the 2007 “launch” on Parliament Hill of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Alexa McDonough, former international co-chair of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and Setsuko Thurlow were key figures in this event. The significance of this “launch” was that it was first in the world that Parliamentarians would hear about ICAN in their country’s Parliament.

    Ten years later ICAN received a Nobel Peace Prize for its work on creating the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, yet Canada did not take part.

    Nancy’s current work includes promoting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and examining the health implications of nuclear power including its links with nuclear weapons.

    Nancy and her husband have three children, six grandchildren and a large garden near the ocean on Mahone Ba

  • Board Member

    Dr. Takaro is a physician-scientist trained in occupational and environmental medicine, public health and toxicology. He has been a member of IPPNW since 1983, first in US and now Canada. His research has focused on the links between human exposures and disease, and determining effective public health based preventive solutions to such risks. Currently, this includes climate impacts on water resources and future conflict. Takaro served as the Canadian co-chair of the Health Professionals Advisory Board to the International Joint Commission on border waters and was a lead author for Health of Canadians in a Changing Climate: Advancing Our Knowledge for Action (Feb 2022). A lack of government response to the overwhelming evidence that we must stop building new large fossil energy infrastructure has led him into non-violent civil disobedience to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and other such projects. In 2022 Dr. Takaro became a professor emeritus of Simon Fraser University where he continues to mentor and do research with knowledge mobilization.

  • Board Member

    Dr. Huguette Hayden was born in France. She received her medical degree in Bordeaux France, came to Canada in 1974. She has 3 children and 7 grand children. Huguette retired child and adolescent psychiatry in 2014. In 1984, she joined IPPNW, and joined the Board of Directors in 2022.

  • Board Member

    Marney Cuff-Eisenbarth, MRT-R; MSW – Social Policy/Indigenous Peoples Policy; ecological farmer. Marney studied radiation biology at McMaster University in the 1970s when the only data in this realm of study arose from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki experience – from that point on she has been deeply interested, and concerned, with all in the realm of “nuclear”. Marney’s other passion is in the realm of social justice and thus she returned to post-secondary to gain knowledge and skills in social movements/social change, community organizing, in particular in the realm of Indigenous Peoples Policies and rights. Recall, Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and around the globe, are disproportionately impacted by nuclear weapons/testing/mining.

    While a long time member of Voice of Women and a volunteer for ICAN, she has often attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, (the impact of nuclear weapons is gender based), as well as to negotiations on the TPNW /1MSP (2017, 2022).

    Marney shared her passions and concerns with her soulmate Paul Eisenbarth (IPPNW member since 1985). While Paul could be said to come from a “lobbying” background to social change, Marney comes from a grassroots organizing/justice background. They found that each having a different approach to social change, resulted in both feeling more empowered and being more effective, in their shared activism and advocacy efforts. She has continued to pursue their work since Paul’s death in 2011, and is ever looking to work on interdisciplinary teams to ensure a safer nuclear-free world – in particular when it comes to marginalized communities. Other than above noted, Marney’s current passions also include education efforts (curriculum development, etc.) on issues of concern to IPPNWC.

    While Marney lived and worked with and for Indigenous and Inuit communities for 20 years, she is now (mostly) retired to her farm in south western Ontario. There she does her best to live off the land and continues to engage in activism and advocacy efforts for a safer, more just, world.

IPPNWC Staff Members

  • Lia Holla - Executive Director