University of Ottawa professor named Canada’s Health Researcher of the Year
Ottawa, November 19, 2008 — At the Canadian Health Research Awards ceremony being held this evening in Ottawa, Dr. Peter Tugwell, Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the Institute of Population Health, will be named Canada’s 2008 Health Researcher of the Year – Health Services and Systems and Population Health Research. Dr. Tugwell will be presented with one of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Michael Smith Prizes in Health Research, a prestigious award that recognizes innovation, creativity and dedication in health research. Named in honour of the late Dr. Michael Smith, who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993, the award provides world-class researchers with funding to pursue critical research and to support and mentor trainees.
“It has been my great honour to nominate Dr. Tugwell for this most prestigious of Canadian prizes in health sciences research,” said Dr. Jacques Bradwejn, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. “Peter is being recognized for his global research focused on health equity, his key role in building the discipline of clinical epidemiology and for his mentoring of young researchers worldwide.”
Dr. Tugwell also holds a Canada Research Chair in Health Equity and is a principal scientist at the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Population Health. Further, he is a senior scientist with the Ottawa Health Research Institute. Throughout his career, Dr. Tugwell has worked to bring the world a step closer to achieving health equity through tremendous leadership and outstanding scholarship. After earning his medical degree, Dr. Tugwell and his wife Jane, a nurse, moved to Nigeria, where they lived in a traditional mud house and treated up to 100 patients a day. During this time, Dr. Tugwell also conducted clinical, immunological and epidemiological studies.
Dr. Tugwell brought his passion for medical research to Canada when he took the position of chief resident in internal medicine at McMaster University. In the decades since, he has emerged as one of Canada’s premier healthcare scholars and an international leader in the fight against global health disparities. Since his arrival in Ottawa, he has brought together an incredibly productive team to develop a research program focused on assessing therapeutic interventions, developing strategies for assessing quality of life, improving teaching methods in medicine and contributing to knowledge translation.
For a complete list of award recipients, please visit the CIHR website www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca.
For information about the Faculty of Medicine, please visit www.med.uottawa.ca.
Media contact:Adina Rachiteanu, Communications Officer
Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa
Telephone: 613-562-5800 extension 8867
Cell: 613-862-8867
E-mail: adina.rachiteanu@uottawa.ca
Web Site: www.med.uottawa.ca