Background - Dr. Joseph Ragaz

Dr. Joseph Ragaz

Medical Oncologist & Clinical Professor
Faculty of Medicine
School of Population & Public Health
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

BACKGROUND

Dr. Ragaz is a graduate of the Westminster Medical School, University of London, U.K. He completed his Internal Medicine subspecialty at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec and the Oncology Training Program at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

During his 1977 - 2003 tenure at the British Columbia Cancer Agency [BCCA], Vancouver, BC, Canada, Dr. Ragaz subspecialized in Breast Cancer. Besides being clinically active full-time, his main organizational initiatives included participation in principal Canadian and North American academic breast cancer projects (such as the implementation of adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy trials at BCCA; contribution to the clinical trials at NCI[C] and NSABP; start and completion of breast cancer chemo-radiation trial; molecular biology studies with tissue microarrays, etc.)

His main organizational activities related to the British Columbia Oncology Breast Cancer Group Projects, which included in the 1980s the expansion of the BCCA Breast Cancer Tumor Group and assistance with the BC Community Oncology Program. In the late 1980s his initiatives led to a successful funding (Lohn Foundation grant) of the BCCA Breast Cancer Outcome Unit.

His main clinical research activities involved multiple provincial, national and international Clinical Research studies, some of them having led to changes in International clinical guidelines (Adoption of Neo-Adjuvant chemotherapy for Early Breast Cancer; Loco-Regional Radiation to chemotherapy in stages I-II Breast Cancer; Role of Mastectomy in stage III Breast cancer treated with Neo-Adjuvant chemo-radiation; and starting at the BCCA, on the Tissue Microarray Project., etc.)

From 2003 to 2008, he was the Director, Oncology Program, McGill University Health Center [MUHC], Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with the main mandate to modernize the MUHC Oncology Program, and specifically to recruit Oncology staff, expanding the Community Oncology program, as well as enlarging the scope of work within the Tumor Groups and clinical trials at MUHC.

2008 - 2022: Dr. Ragaz is currently a Clinical Professor at the Faculty of Medicine's School of Population and Public Health (SPPH), University of British Columbia, (UBC), Vancouver, B.C., Canada, and the Director of the Oncology Counselling, Education and Prevention Clinic, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He continues with multiple academic activities involving Population and Public Health, with a focus on Breast Cancer Outcomes, and in the last decade more specifically on the HRT. Here, the analyses of his group are focused on the very poorly publicized WHI data of the exogenous HRT estrogen - in sharp contrast to the endogenous estrogen - reducing, not increasing breast cancer mortality rates. See Academic Research.