Celebrating DFCM's 2023 Senior Promotions: Full and Associate Professors

Dr. Sandy Buchman is a palliative care physician and a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Division of Palliative Care at the University of Toronto and McMaster University. He is the Freeman Family Chair in Palliative Care and Medical Director of The Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care at North York General.

From 2019-2020, he served as President of the Canadian Medical Association and is also a past president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Ontario College of Family Physicians. From 2005-2019, he provided home-based palliative and end-of-life care with the Sinai Health System’s Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care and with the Palliative Care and Education for the Homeless (PEACH) Program of Inner City Health Associates in Toronto.  Sandy is a founder and medical lead of Neshama Hospice,  a new hospice residence currently being built in the Toronto area, and has also co-founded MAIDHouse, a facility established to provide medical assistance in dying as an alternative location to home or hospital provision. He is the 2020 recipient of the W. Victor Johnston Award by the College of Family Physicians of Canada. This award recognizes a renowned Canadian or international family medicine leader for continuous and enduring contributions to the specialty of family medicine in Canada or abroad. He also received the 2022 Carmelita Lawlor Lectureship Award in Palliative Care from the University of Toronto and Hospice Palliative Care Ontario.

Dr. David Carr is a Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine and Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.  He is an Emergency Physician and Clinical Investigator at the University Health Network and Mackenzie Health Hospital.  He is also the Continuing Professional Development Lead in the Tri-Division of Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto.  He has been the recipients of multiple Undergraduate and Post Graduate Clinical Teaching awards.  During the Baseball season, he works at the Roger's Centre as the Medical director of Stadium Medicine for the Toronto Blue Jays. In 2010, he pursued his passions serving as an ER physician in the Athletes Village for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  Since 2010, He has co- authored the chapter on Occlusive Arterial Disease in the 7-9^th editions of Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Michelle Greiver is a Professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto; she holds the Cheesbrough Chair in Family and Community Medicine Research and North York General Hospital.  As Director, she oversees the Electronic Medical Record Data Safe Haven and clinical research activities for UTOPIAN, the University of Toronto Practice Based Research Network (PBRN). It includes all 14 academic units at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, its affiliated teaching practices, and other practices in the community. Dr Greiver is the lead for the new multi-PBLRN provincial initiative, POPLAR-the Primary care Ontario Practice-based Learning and Research Network. Dr. Greiver chairs the PBLRN national Action Group, College of Family Physicians of Canada.  She co-leads the Digital Health for Research and Care for the CIHR SPOR Network, Diabetes Action Canada and leads its national Diabetes Data Repository.  Dr Greiver was a founding member of the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN), Canada’s multi-EMR chronic disease surveillance system. In 2021, Dr Greiver was appointed by the Ontario Minister of Health as a member of the Ontario Health Data Council, tasked with advising the Minister on the strategic management of Ontario’s health data assets.  

Dr Greiver is the nominated PI for SPIDER-NET, a national RCT on safer prescribing for older patients with polypharmacy in primary care involving 7 PBLRNs in five provinces; the project has received $1 million from CIHR and $1.6 million in matching funds.

Dr. Liisa Jaakkimainen is a family physician practicing with the Sunnybrook Academic Family Health Team. She completed her MSc in Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen’s University in 1988, her MD at McMaster University in 1995 and her family medicine residency at the University of Toronto in 1997. She a senior core scientist and program lead of the Primary Care and Health Systems program at ICES and a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) and the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Dr. Jaakkimainen has been a Clinician Investigator at DFCM since 1998 and she is the program director of the DFCM Enhanced Skills - Clinician Scientist Program for Research.

Dr. Katherine Rouleau is a family physician and global health expert. She has practiced and taught team-based family medicine at St-Michael’s Hospital in the St-Jamestown neighborhood of Toronto for over 25 years. At the University of Toronto, she is director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Family Medicine and Primary Care, and Global (Primary Health Care -PHC) lead in the Office of Health System Partnerships with the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM).

Her academic, clinical and leadership interests center on collaboration to improve health equity and address the complex health needs of individuals and communities impacted by adverse determinants of health through high-quality comprehensive primary care at the core of PHC-oriented health systems.

In addition to the transformative impact of relationships with her patients over nearly three decades, her work has been shaped by countless collaborators and learners with shared interests, including many from low- and middle-income countries.

Her past leadership and administrative roles include founding director of the Besrour Centre for Global Family Medicine at the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CCFP), vice-chair Global Health and Social Accountability at the DFCM and technical officer for PHC at the World Health Organization headquarters. Dr. Rouleau has contributed as co-author and co-editor to numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, WHO documents and textbooks.

Dr. Arun Sayal is an emergency physician at North York General Hospital, one of U of T’s community teaching hospitals. For the last several years, he has added a pair of unique clinical experiences: a weekly Minor Fracture Clinic and assisting in the Operating Room with orthopedic trauma cases. Combining these three roles with NYGH’s dedication to excellence in medical education resulted in his creation and development of CASTED, a comprehensive full-day (and now multi-day) ED orthopedics course.

Since 2008, Arun has presented CASTED over 500 times in over 10 countries. Versions of the course have been requested and developed for a variety of organizations and professions including Médecins Sans Frontières, primary care physicians, rural colleagues, nurses, paramedics, and the military. Developing the course spawned other educational opportunities focused on ED orthopedics. Arun has given over 100 international lectures, authored book chapters and peer-reviewed articles, edited journals and contributed to several podcasts. Over 20 teaching awards have been received at hospital, university, national and international levels including the College of Family Physicians of Canada’s ‘Continuing Professional Development Award’ (2021 and 2011), the University of Maryland’s ‘Outstanding Contributions to Emergency Medicine Education Award’ (2019), North York General Hospital’s ‘Tim Rutledge Education Achievement Award’ (2020), and the University of Toronto’s ‘Excellence in Emergency Medicine Award’ (2020).

Arun has been a ‘lifer’ at U of T – undergrad, medical school, residency and staff. Throughout his almost 40 years at U of T, and 33 years at NYGH, Arun has been surrounded and supported by inspiring mentors, outstanding colleagues and enthusiastic ‘soon-to-be’ colleagues. His passions in medicine remain patient care, bedside teaching and translating his unique clinical experiences to enhance the quality of ED orthopedic care provided to patients in NYGH’s ED, across the country and beyond.

Dr. Nicole (Nikki) Woods, PhD joined the Department of Family and Community Medicine Office of Education Scholarship in 2015. Her internationally-recognized research program uses principles of memory and human cognition to examine the mental representation of categories and design instruction that supports cognitive integration of basic and clinical sciences. Dr. Woods' work has had a transformational impact on the full spectrum of medical education, informing teaching practice in family medicine and across health disciplines and care contexts.

Nikki is a global leader in health professions education and a highly-sought after speaker. She has worked with prestigious institutions across North America to design evidence-informed education tools and strategies. Dr. Woods currently holds the Richard and Elizabeth Currie Chair for Research in Health Professions Education and is Director & Senior Scientist at The Institute for Education Research (TIER) at the University Health Network. She is also Scientist and Associate Director at The Wilson Centre. In 2019,  Dr. Woods was named an inaugural Fellow of the Karolinska Institute Prize for Research in Medical Education. In 2021, She was recognized as one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women by WXN.

Dr. Farhan M. Asrar is an internationally recognized leader, physician, educator, academic and researcher. He has trained in family medicine, and Public Health & Preventive Medicine. In addition to his faculty appointment with DFCM, he is cross-appointed with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, a Global faculty member with the International Space University (France),  and member of the Temerty Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Education in Medicine. He also holds leadership positions with the Trillium Health Partners, being the Physician Research Lead at two of the DFCM teaching sites at the Mississauga Hospital and Credit Valley Hospital; and is an investigator at the Institute for Better Health.

Dr. Asrar practices clinical family medicine and has also been actively involved in teaching and research. He has been teaching at a local, provincial, national and international level, working with residents and learners at UofT, and has championed educating physicians across Ontario and residency programs across Canada on public health and environmental health issues. Dr. Asrar has also been involved teaching internationally since over a decade and has been invited to multidisciplinary educational programs to teach professionals and learners from over 40 countries.

Dr. Harvey Blankenstein is a comprehensive family physician at the North York General Hospital where he has been teaching extensively at the clerkship and postgraduate levels for over thirty years.

Dr. Blankenstein has been a previous NYGH Hospital Undergraduate Program Director and member of the Undergraduate Education committee at DFCM (1995-2005). He also served as the Interim Undergraduate Program Director at the DFCM (2004). These efforts have been recognized with several teaching awards including Excellence in Course/Program Development and Coordination, Undergraduate Education.

In his role as President of the Medical staff Association at NYGH, he facilitated the adoption by the medical staff of a new formal Community Affiliation agreement between NYGH and the University of Toronto to better integrate the community affiliated teaching hospitals and other community-based teaching and practice sites into the education and research enterprise, TAHSN.

As a Founding member of the Initial Board and the Inaugural Medical Director of the North York Academic Family Health Team, he advocated for this newly formed FHT as an academic teaching site to the Ontario Ministry of Health and developed interprofessional educational opportunities for medical learners, nursing, and other allied health students.

Dr. Blankenstein was one of the founding members of the Quality Improvement Program and QI Curriculum Development Team at the DFCM which delivered a new QI curriculum into the residency program and provided QI training to faculty. Dr. Blankenstein also served as Co-Chair, Quality Improvement Steering Committee at North York General Hospital. He has presented several workshops and posters on the integration of quality improvement into all aspects of DFCM education, research, and professional development activities. He is a recipient of the Founders Award, and two Faculty and Staff Impact Awards, Quality Improvement Program at DFCM.

Dr. Camille Lemieux has been with the UHN Department of Family medicine and the Toronto Western Family Health Team since 2006. She completed her pharmacy training at the University of Toronto, law school at the University of Ottawa, medical school at Queen's University, and her Master of Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. In addition to practicing pharmacy, medicine and law, Camille worked at the Ministry of Health in the aftermath of SARS. She then joined UHN as a hospital epidemiologist, in addition to her UHN work in family medicine, and in that role was involved in a large amount of scholarly work related to hospital-acquired infections. Camille became Department Head, Family Medicine in 2019, and took on a lead role in COVID surveillance and vaccination in 2020. Through her work during COVID, Camille further contributed to creative professional development and scholarly work. Camille also sits on CPSO Council and works to contribute positively to regulation of the profession.

Dr. Justin Morgenstern is probably best known for his involvement in online education, where he is actively involved in teaching resuscitation and evidence based medicine on numerous podcasts and blogs, including the website he created, First10EM. He also loves simulation, creating and co-managing the simulation program at Markham Stouffville Hospital. Outside of medicine, he loves travel and landscape photography. You can find some of his images at: https://www.justinmorgenstern.com/

Dr. Giovanna Sirianni has worked as a family physician with a focused practice in palliative care at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre for the last 16 years. At the DFCM, she holds the roles of Enhanced Skills Program Director and Faculty Development Lead for the Division of Palliative Care.

Dr. Sirianni’s academic interests include supporting learner competence via excellent instructional methods and learner assessment. She has made it a career commitment to support the implementation of Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME) in both undergraduate and postgraduate education to ensure that learners are practice ready. She is a dedicated teacher in the undergraduate, postgraduate, graduate and continuing professional development areas of medicine. Dr. Sirianni has been the recipient of multiple teaching awards for her work with medical learners.

Narrative and reflection are key parts of Dr. Sirianni’s teaching philosophy. In line with this philosophy, she co-developed a podcast to connect her interests in palliative care and medical education. The About Empathy Podcast is intended as an educational tool for health professions learners. It highlights the stories of patients living with serious, life-limiting illnesses, the stories of their caregivers and the stories of healthcare providers to help support empathic communication and compassionate care.

Beyond being a clinician teacher, Dr. Sirianni has also been engaged in education scholarship and research to help impact the larger medical education community by sharing lessons learned via peer review. Dr. Sirianni’s work has been published and presented both nationally and internationally. Among other publications, her writing has been featured in Medical Teacher, Canadian Family Physician and The Globe and Mail.