Morris DC Komakech
Assistant Professor

Dr. Morris DC Komakech

He/him/his

Biography

Dr. Komakech recently completed his doctoral degree from York University in health policy and equity. Dr Komakech has a professional expertise in health and healthcare fields, having started his career in Uganda as a physiotherapist working in pediatrics, neuro and orthopedic rehab and later in community-based rehabilitation around Uganda. He relocated to Canada and became a Public Health Nurse working for over 15 years with Toronto Public Health (TPH). At TPH, he received several recognitions for excellence in nursing student mentorship. Dr. Komakech brings on board a diverse clinical and community/public health nursing experience to his teaching practice.

Positions

Full-time Faculty
Faculty of Education and Professional Studies

Education

PhD, Health Policy and Equity, York University
2022.
MPH/ Global Health, University of Toronto
2014.
BScN, York University. 2007.

Languages spoken

  • English
  • Lwo
  • Swahili
  • Luganda

Teaching Areas

Undergraduate Programs

  • Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BScN)

Graduate Supervision

Accepting Students for Supervision

Guidelines or Expectations for Prospective Students

Graduate studies in health, nursing and social works

Research

Research Interests

Dr. Morris Komakech is a health equity researcher and participatory implementation scientist who studies how colonial governance continues to produce health inequities through specific institutional pathways in administration, law, policy, and professional practice. His Colonial Determinants of Health framework advances this argument across two geographic contexts, Canada and postcolonial Africa, tracing how the same institutional logics shape social policy failures, health service gaps, and nursing education in both settings. Rather than stopping at diagnosis, he co-designs and tests multilevel interventions with community members and policy makers, building responses that operate simultaneously across clinical, institutional, and legislative levels. A second stream of his work examines how nursing education and professional formation either embed or obstruct structural health equity, with particular attention to what curriculum change requires at the institutional level.

Current Research Projects / Labs

  • Colonial Determinants of Health
  • Developing and testing the Colonial Determinants of Health framework to explain how colonial governance perpetuates health inequities in Africa. Created collaboratively with trainee scholars from Canadian and African institutions and positioned for competitive national and international funding.
  • Voices from the Frontiers – Global Health
  • A participatory study on how extreme weather impacts health and social cohesion in Gulu, Amuru and Kitgum Districts, Northern Uganda—areas marked by conflict, displacement, and environmental disruption. Community members co-designed the study using digital storytelling and Acholi oral traditions to produce community-owned knowledge. Grounded in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and critical consciousness. Funded by a $0,000 internal grant; ethics review pending.
  • Healthcare Access in Rural and Northern Ontario – North Bay Immigrants Study
  • Examines structural barriers to healthcare access in underserved Ontario regions, aiming to produce findings actionable by regional health authorities and policymakers.
  • Regent Park Bereavement Study – Transgenerational Impact of Gangs-and-Guns Violence
  • A community-engaged study with Regent Park residents exploring how bereavement intersects with structural life conditions in a marginalized Toronto neighborhood and its implications for health services.
  • Equity in Nursing Education and Professional Practice
  • Posits that nursing curricula shape professional practice by highlighting or ignoring structural health equity, influencing graduates’ responses to patients’ inequitable conditions. Project critically examines the implementation and barriers of structural equity practices in Canadian nursing curricula and professional formation, identifying institutional obstacles that hinder equity commitments from translating into practice.
  • Health Policy Lab
  • A mentorship initiative positioning graduate and undergraduate trainees as collaborators in health equity research production and dissemination, with explicit support for emerging scholars from diverse backgrounds to publish.

Open to Media Inquiries