Dr. Hodgins is a family physician by training, with an MSc and a DrPH in health behaviour and public health leadership and received board certification in the U.S. in preventive medicine.

He was first launched on a career trajectory focused on community health in low-income settings as a volunteer in India. Since then, he spent a period of six years involved in such work with First Nations and Inuit communities in Quebec. 

Over the past 20 years, he has been working in global health. This has included extended periods living in Zambia and Nepal. His work has been at local, national and global levels, including a period of 8 years based in Washington, DC. He has been practice-based but with a consistent substantive involvement in applied research. 

He believes that effective public health practice requires being grounded in the complex, real-world settings where our efforts are meant to achieve impact. Such practice requires critical thinking and genuine commitment. Too often, our practice lacks rigour and our research lacks real-world relevance. Sounder work and more rapid progress on improving population health require putting the two together. That’s the passion of his professional life. One of his continuing activities is serving as Editor-in-chief for the journal Global Health: Science & Practice; this offers an ideal platform for bringing together rigour and relevance.