S. Michelle Driedger, PhD, is a Professor in the College of Community and Global Health in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in the Social Sciences Academy, and a former Tier II Canada Research Chair in Health Risk Communication.

She is also a proud Red River Métis Nation citizen working in full partnership with the Manitoba Métis Federation Health and Wellness Department in Métis health research.

She is a leader in decolonizing and partnership-based research, focusing on the science and practice of effective risk communication under conditions of uncertainty. She studies how trust in public health and primary care providers may be fostered by examining public perspectives on the credibility of the source of the communication, what recommendations are communicated, and how members of the general population and Métis citizens make decisions to accept (or not) those recommendations to protect themselves and their families. She examines these issues using different case studies with an intersectional lens regarding gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic conditions, and systemic racism from colonial experiences of Indigenous Peoples, like the Red River Métis.

She brings a wealth of experiences in evaluating public uptake of public health recommendations, including vaccines, during pandemic H1N1 and COVID-19.