Alexa Yakubovich, PhD

Education       

• Postdoctoral Fellowship (University of Toronto & St Michael’s Hospital)  
• PhD (University of Oxford)
• MSc (University of Oxford)
• BA Honours (University of Manitoba)

Research interests

Dr. Alexa Yakubovich's research program aims to uncover what causes and can prevent violence and its negative health outcomes, with a particular focus on violence against women and gender-based violence more broadly. The most common forms of gender-based violence are domestic violence (including intimate partner violence) and sexualized violence, which have major health impacts, including mental health problems, injury, and chronic disease and pain. Nova Scotia has the highest self-reported prevalence of intimate partner violence against women among all Canadian provinces. Dr. Yakubovich's research is equity- and action-oriented, often conducted with policy, organizational, and community partners, including people with lived experience of violence. She currently holds the inaugural Eastern Canada Award in CIHR’s Health System Impact Embedded Early Career Research program.

Dr. Yakubovich leads two streams of research. The first is focused on the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions that can prevent violence and its health inequities. Major aims in this area include strengthening both health systems and housing responses to domestic and sexualized violence. In her second research stream, Dr. Yakubovich focuses on understanding burdens of violence, including measurement, risk factors, and outcomes, with the goal of informing which preventive interventions and policies are most likely to be effective. Dr. Yakubovich uses a variety of research methods in her work, including epidemiologic methods, mixed methods, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, psychometrics, community-based participatory research, and implementation science.

Selected publications

• Yakubovich, A. R., Steele, B., Cullum, J., Johnson, C. P., Parker, L. N., Wilson, S. J., . . . Rose, A. E. (2025). Health system preparedness to respond to domestic and sexualized violence: A cross-sectional survey in Nova Scotia, Canada. Preventive Medicine Reports, 53.
• Yakubovich, A. R., Boucher, L., Dodd, Z., Gerhardt, A., & Shastri, P. (2025). Women's experiences of homelessness and violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada's largest city: an integrated qualitative analysis of clients of violence against women organizations and encampment residents. BMC Public Health, 25(1), 1529.
• Yakubovich, A. R., Bartsch, A., Metheny, N., Gesink, D., & O’Campo, P. (2022). Housing interventions for women experiencing intimate partner violence: a systematic review. The Lancet Public Health, 7(1), e23-e35. 
• Yakubovich, A. R., Heron, J., Metheny, N., Gesink, D., & O’Campo, P. (2022). Measuring the burden of intimate partner violence by sex and sexual identity: results from a random sample in Toronto, Canada. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(19-20), NP18690-NP18712.
• Yakubovich, A. R., Esposti, M. D., Lange, B. C., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Parmar, A., Wiebe, D. J., & Humphreys, D. K. (2021). Effects of laws expanding civilian rights to use deadly force in self-defense on violence and crime: a systematic review. American Journal of Public Health, 111(4), e1-e14.
• Yakubovich, A. R., Heron, J., Feder, G., Fraser, A., & Humphreys, D. K. (2020). Long-term exposure to neighborhood deprivation and intimate partner violence among women: a UK birth cohort study. Epidemiology, 31(2), 272.
• Yakubovich, A. R., Stöckl, H., Murray, J., Melendez-Torres, G. J., Steinert, J. I., Glavin, C. E., & Humphreys, D. K. (2018). Risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence against women: Systematic review and meta-analyses of prospective-longitudinal studies. American Journal of Public Health, 108(7), e1-e11.

Selected awards & honours

• Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine Early Career Investigator Award (2024)
• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Health System Impact Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-2021)
• CIHR and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Postdoctoral Fellowship in Research and Knowledge Translation in Urban Housing and Health (2019-2021)
• CIHR Doctoral Foreign Study Award (2017-2020)
• Rhodes Scholarship (2015-2018)