David Zakus, BSc, MES, MSc, PhD was born in Prince Alberta, Saskatchewan then moved to Toronto where he still lives today. He has a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Saskatchewan, a Master of Environmental Studies in Nutrition and Environmental Health from York University and MSc and PhD in Community Health/Health Services Management/Organization Behaviour from the University of Toronto.  

He has had full-time professorial appointments at McGill University (1991-95), University of Toronto (2000-2009), University of Alberta (2011-2015) and Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University (2015-2018). In those institutions he taught many courses and carried out research all related to global health, primary health care, research and health services management. He helped develop, initiate and directed three Centres/Programs in Global Health (UofT, UA, TMU), and has worked in some 45 countries in Africa, Latin America, Central Europe and Asia. He retired from full-time academia in 2018. Much university and educational work continued after retirement, including consulting with a multilateral organization, and program development, evaluation and capacity building with NGOs and part-time teaching of Global Health at York University.

David is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto (2018 to present); the Founding Editor and Publisher of the free Planetary Health Weekly (planetaryhealthweekly.com) from 2015 to present; the Founding Managing Principal of D&D Education Services, Inc., and was until very recently co-chair of the Canadian Association for Global Health’s Working Group on Climate Change and Health.