Our Team

Dr. Jennifer Coelho

Investigator, BC Children's Hospital
Psychologist, Provincial Specialized Eating Disorders Program for Children & Adolescents, BC Children's Hospital

Dr. Jennifer Coelho is a psychologist in the Provincial Specialized Eating Disorders Program for Children & Adolescents at BC Children’s Hospital, and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UBC. She holds a Health-Professional Investigator award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.  Her research focuses on factors that are involved in the development and maintenance of eating disorders, and how to improve treatment outcomes in children and youth with eating disorders. 

Dr. Coelho strives to integrate research into her clinical practice. She has held several research grants, including recent projects funded by the Swiss Anorexia Nervosa Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. 

Details of Dr. Coelho’s publications are available through ResearchGate and Google Scholar.

Jaafar Aghajanian

Quality Analyst

Jaafar Aghajanian has worked as the Quality Analyst for the Provincial Specialized Eating Disorders Program for Children and Adolescents, PHSA, since 2019. Jaafar graduated from the UVic School of Health Information Science and is a faculty member in the Department of Medicine, UBC, where he co-teaches courses on research methodology and data analysis.
 
Jaafar has over 15 years of experience in health research and evaluation, both in Canada and internationally including India, Nepal and Tibet. He is passionate about improving health outcomes and specializes in leading quality improvement initiatives, information systems design and conducting data analyses.

Jaafar enjoys expressing himself creatively in the forms of oil painting and poetry, and tries to stay healthy and sharp by playing tennis, golf, Tai Chi and online chess.

Dr. Pei-Yoong Lam

Investigator, BC Children's Hospital
Pediatrician & Co-medical Director, Provincial Specialized Eating Disorders Program for Children and Adolescents

The Provincial Specialized Eating Disorders Program for Children & Adolescents, based at BC Children's Hospital, employs evidence-based therapies in the treatment of youth with eating disorders. As the co-medical director (Pediatrics) in this program, Dr. Pei-Yoong Lam is involved in creating treatment guidelines for the hospital and the province, and reviewing outcomes of youth receiving treatment in this program. Dr. Lam is also interested in the medical complications in youth who develop eating disorders and how we can better monitor and treat these complications.

Yeshvi Mehta

Research Assistant

Yeshvi Mehta is the Research Assistant for the Eating Disorders Program. She currently holds a bachelor’s degree in Integrated Sciences from UBC, where she combined the disciplines Global Health and Physiology.

Arnima Singh

Research Assistant (UBC Work Learn Program)

Arnima Singh just finished her second year at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Science. She is pursuing a Combined Major in Science and is particularly interested in mental health and intervention measures. During her free time, she can be found at aesthetic cafes studying, a pretext for justifying an unhealthy amount of coffee.

Fermin Hoq

Volunteer Research Assistant

Fermin Hoq is the volunteer Research Assistant for the Eating Disorders Program at BC Children's Hospital and is currently a Masters student in Neuroscience at UBC. Fermin's research investigates the impacts of pain and sucrose on neuroinflammation and microglial activation in a translational neonatal mouse model.

Haya Zaid-Alkailani

Research Coordinator

Haya Zaid-Alkailani is the research coordinator for the Eating Disorders Program at BC Children’s Hospital and a Masters student in the Clinical Child Psychology Program at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests focus on factors such as parenting, risk and resilience, and loneliness and how they relate to eating disorders in children and adolescents.

Fiza Syal
Deepika Bajaj