Dr. Tessa Clemens is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Global Child Health at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. Her area of focus is the epidemiology and prevention of paediatric injuries in low- and middle-income countries. Tessa’s current project involves establishing a hospital based paediatric injury surveillance system in a low-resource setting. She has a PhD in Kinesiology and Health Science from York University in Toronto. Her dissertation research focused on the epidemiology and prevention of drowning in Canada, and the reporting and classification of drowning deaths worldwide.

Tessa received a Masters degree in Education in 2012 and has been teaching aquatic and lifesaving courses for over 10 years. She also teaches undergraduate courses in the epidemiology of injury prevention. Tessa worked as the national technical manager for the Canadian Drowning Prevention Coalition and as a research administrator for the Drowning Prevention Research Centre Canada. In these roles she participated in the creation of the first Canadian Drowning Prevention Plan and contributed to numerous provincial and national drowning reports.