Jeff Nisker is a clinician, researcher, university professor, and writer. His plays and short stories bring health professionals, students, the general public and policy makers to the position of persons immersed in the social inequities of new scientific capacities. Jeff has received many research grants in the basic, clinical and social sciences from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Genome Canada, and other institutions to study prevention of estrogen-related cancer, ethical and social issues in reproductive-genetics, and the lack of accommodation persons with disability receive for health promotion. Jeff has also co-held a CIHR/Health Canada grant to research public engagement and citizen deliberation through his innovative use of full-length theatre for health policy development.

Jeff has authored or co- authored over 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters, many short stories, and seven plays published in the collection From Calcedonies to Orchids: Plays Promoting Humanity and Health Policy. His plays have been performed throughout Canada, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa. Jeff’s new book, the novel Patiently Waiting For, centres on the denial of accommodation of a woman with quadriplegia and the resulting physical and social consequences.

Jeff has served on the editorial board of Journal of Medical Humanities and ARS Medica and is the international representative on the Board of the Centre of Literature and Medicine. Jeff’s national positions have included: Co-chair of Health Canada’s Advisory Committee on Reproductive and Genetic Technology, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, Scientific Officer of the CIHR Panel on Ethics, Law and Humanities, and Executive of the Canadian Bioethics Society.

Through all this Jeff has maintained his clinical practice in hormone-dependent malignancy, pituitary tumors and reproductive endocrinology.