Who We Are
Partners
Murray Lee, Senior Partner
murray (at) habitatcorp.com
Murray Lee, MD, MPH, has made a career out of studying how ‘place’ affects health. He obtained a B.Sc. from McGill University, trained in medicine at the University of Calgary, and completed his residency training at Queen’s University in 1996. Dr. Lee has subsequently practiced clinical medicine from the Arctic shores of Nunavut to the high desert of New Mexico and many points in between, with a special focus on rural and remote medicine in northern Alberta and aboriginal populations in northern Canada. Combining his professional background with a life-long interest in geography and urban planning, Dr. Lee completed a Master’s Degree in Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, with a special emphasis on the impact of the built environment on community health and human health behaviors. Dr. Lee is currently a Research Affiliate at the Population Health Intervention Research Centre (PHIRC) at the University of Calgary, and is a Master Teacher at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary.
Marla Orenstein, Senior Partner
marla (at) habitatcorp.com
Marla Orenstein is a population health researcher whose work focuses on lifestyle and environmental risk factors for chronic disease and injury. Ms. Orenstein has a B.A. from McGill University and a professional background in writing and communications. Since obtaining an M.Sc. in Epidemiology from the University of Edinburgh in 1997, she has produced work for both the public and private sectors. Recent population health projects include consulting for the Alberta Cancer Board; the Traffic Safety Center at the University of California, Berkeley; the Department of Health and Social Services of the Government of Nunavut; the Department of Health and Social Services of the Government of the Northwest Territories; the American Institute for Cancer Research; and the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, Davis.
Core Personnel
Jme McLean, Senior Associate
jme (at) habitatcorp.com
Jme McLean, MPH, MCP(c) brings a strong interest in the social and environmental determinants of health and population-based disparities. With over ten years of experience in research, programming, and policy, Ms. McLean’s work spans the fields of community development, urban planning, mental health, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention. Some of Ms. McLean’s recent projects have included advising local level approaches for national environmental public health tracking efforts, conducting health assessments of land use decisions in the San Francisco Bay Area, strategic planning for healthy places initiatives in California, and planning and evaluating HIV/AIDS prevention programs in China. Ms. McLean is an alumna of Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. She is currently pursuing graduate work at UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design in City and Regional Planning.
Max Richardson, Senior Associate
max (at) habitatcorp.com
Max Richardson brings to Habitat a professional interest in the intersection of ecology and health. His diverse background includes working as a fire ecologist in remote deserts of the U.S. and tropical forests of Costa Rica, as a laboratory researcher studying diabetes, and as a health policy analyst in Washington, DC. Max has more recently directed his attention to the impacts of city and regional planning on chronic disease outcomes and has worked on several projects in the San Francisco area examining the positive and negative health implications of urban infill projects. Max holds a B.A. from the University of Denver and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently completing a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning.
Josie Auger, Senior Associate
josie (at) habitatcorp.com
Josie Auger is an educator and health researcher, and a member of the Bigstone Cree Nation. Ms. Auger has taught Indigenous Studies, Canadian History, and Native Health issues for the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta and Maskwachees Cultural College. She has conducted research and written reports for the University of Alberta, various levels of government and Aboriginal communities on diverse health issues such as diabetes, respiratory diseases, injuries, birth weight, mental heath, and sexually transmitted infections and HIV. Other health-related topics of interest include developing health policy using the determinants of health from a cultural perspective within aboriginal communities. Currently, Ms. Auger is completing her Ph.D. dissertation on STI/HIV prevention using popular theatre and action research in an Aboriginal community. Apart from Western academics, Josie has been also in the "Indian School", a virtual reality where Elders pray, teach, sing, and dance. The Indian School is a place where the concrete reality of the physical world meets the abstract spiritual dimension.
Ame-Lia Tamburrini, Research Associate
ame-lia (at) habitatcorp.com
Ame-Lia Tamburrini has great interest in the social determinants of health and how physical environments affect health. Her academic and research experiences are diverse and include studies in planning and development in the circumpolar north; work focusing on socioeconomic status and obesity; a project exploring planning for public health disasters in Alberta; and research on the health impacts of social networks in senior populations. Ame-Lia also has experience working in India on community intervention programs aimed at helping underserved communities gain self-sufficiency. She has also held the position of study coordinator of the Physical Activity and Breast Cancer Prevention (ALPHA) Trial at the Alberta Cancer Board. Ame-Lia holds a B.Sc. in Kinesiology from the University of Waterloo and is in the final stages of her M.Sc. in Epidemiology at the University of Calgary.