The Office of Health System Partnerships (OHSP) is a solutions workshop within the University of Toronto’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, the largest department of family and community medicine in the world and home to the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Family Medicine and Primary Care.
OHSP brings people together to solve complex problems, drawing on the collective expertise of 2,000+ academic family physicians, researchers, health system leaders, clinicians, learners, patients, and community partners to find bold, pragmatic solutions to strengthen primary care and improve the health of our communities.
Together, we are working toward a clear goal:
-
Every person is attached to a responsive and high-quality, publicly funded primary care team.
-
Every primary care team is designed in partnership with its community.
A solutions workshop
We believe that by catalyzing practical, data-driven thought leadership, we can shift how healthcare systems work and how clinicians practice, to improve the health of our communities.
DFCM is partnering with organizations including Ontario Health Toronto Region to support its goal of connecting and coordinating our current health system and its many complex parts.
Dr. Danielle Martin
Chair, Department of Family and Community Medicine
Dr. Tara Kiran
Vice-Chair, Quality and Innovation
Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation
Department of Family and Community Medicine
Dr. Noah Ivers
Scientific Lead
Dr. Noah Ivers is a family physician at Women's College Hospital, scientist at Women’s College Research Institute, and innovation fellow at the Women's College Institute for Health System Solutions. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He holds a Canada Research Chair in the Implementation of Evidence Based Practice. Noah's research focuses on the use of data to drive evidence-based, patient-centred improvements in healthcare. He has conducted multiple pragmatic randomized trials, systematic reviews, and qualitative work on health services and quality improvement interventions.
Dr. Ryan Banach
Family Medicine Early Career Supports Lead
Dr. Banach is a Lecturer at DFCM who has been practicing comprehensive office-based family medicine in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto for 11 years—an experience that has given him insight into the inequality of care patients receive across different neighbourhoods in Toronto. He is an adjunct clinical lecturer at DFCM who has taught both medical students and residents. Dr. Banach is passionate about practice management and frequently delivers presentations to physicians to help them understand better the business side of medicine. He also presents seminars on billing, office efficiency, and career management to Ontario family physicians.
Ali N. Damji, BHSc, MD, MSc., CCFP
Primary Care Collaborative Partnership Lead
Focus: Support the OHSP in its strategic goal to strengthen our relationship with the Ontario College of Family Physician (OCFP), the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and/or other professional groups focused on improving primary care while supporting physician well-being.
Dr. Ali Damji is a family physician and addiction medicine physician from Mississauga, Canada. He works clinically at the Credit Valley Family Health Team and the Halton & Mississauga Rapid Access to Addiction Medicine Clinic. He is the Quality Improvement Program Director for the Credit Valley Family Medicine Teaching Unit and regularly teaches quality improvement to faculty, other health professionals, residents, and medical students locally and internationally at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Makerere University in Uganda. He completed his medical school, family medicine residency, and Master of Science in System Leadership and Innovation at the University of Toronto.
He is Division Head of Primary Care at Trillium Health Partners where he leads approximately 300 family physicians. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and an Investigator with the Institute for Better Health. He is also actively involved in leadership, serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Effective Practice, a member of the Policy & Advocacy Committee of the Ontario Medical Association Section of General & Family Practice Executive, and Honorary Secretary-Treasurer for the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine.
He is the recipient of numerous leadership and teaching awards including most recently the University of Toronto MD Program Teaching Award of Excellence, Department of Family & Community Medicine Mentorship Award for Undergraduate Medical Students, The COVID Hero Award from the City of Mississauga, multiple Quality and Innovation Awards from Trillium Health Partners and the College of Family Physicians of Canada Award of Excellence.
Dr. Rajesh Girdhari
Digital Health Lead
Dr. Girdhari is the Digital Health Lead, a role that will work with Ontario Health-Toronto Region to support the rollout of primary care IT initiatives to serve our patients, communities, and the primary care providers of the region as well as DFCM faculty and learners. Dr. Girdhari is an Assistant Professor at DFCM who provides primary care and addiction medicine services to people in the Regent Park community as a family physician on the St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team at Sumac Creek Health Centre. He has been a lead for both IT and quality improvement at St. Michael’s Hospital DFCM since 2015. Prior to these roles, he worked as a partner and clinical lead at a health IT start-up company in Toronto. He also has experience working in community emergency rooms and addiction medicine services across the GTA.
Dr. Katherine Rouleau
Global Primary Health Care Lead
Dr. Katherine Rouleau is a family physician at Unity Health-St-Michael’s Hospital, and director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Family Medicine and Primary Care at DFCM. Her clinical and academic interests include health equity, the role of family medicine and primary care in strengthening health systems locally and globally, global health education, the scholarship-leadership continuum and the care of disadvantaged populations in Canada and abroad.
Jennifer Shuldiner, PhD
Evaluation Faculty Lead
Focus: Co-lead the evaluation of the Peers for Joy initiative which integrates DFCM team members from wellness, quality and research. Guide the qualitative evaluation methodology for the interprofessional primary care teams.
Dr. Shuldiner is a scientist at Women's College Hospital and an assistant professor at the Institute of Health Policy and Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She also holds an AMS Healthcare Fellowship in Compassion and Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health. Her interests and methodological expertise lie in improving primary care through thoughtful design and rigorous evaluation to enable real-time improvements. She integrates a human-centered design approach, behavioural science, implementation science, and mixed methods to design, implement, and evaluate programs aimed at improving patient outcomes and experiences. Jennifer is passionate about the co-production of research to facilitate the development and implementation of effective, patient-centered, and provider-centered innovations.
Jack Westfall, MD, MPH
Senior Advisor, Health System Leadership
Focus: Provide strategic advice to faculty in the areas of community- based participatory primary care research, with a focus on capacity building at community sites.
Jack grew up in Yuma, Colorado. During high school he worked in the hospital as a lab technician and earned his EMT. He completed his MD and master’s in public health at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, an internship in hospital medicine in Wichita, Kansas, and his Family Medicine Residency at the University of Colorado Rose Family Medicine Program. After joining the faculty at the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine, Dr Westfall started the High Plains Research Network, a geographic community and practice-based research network in rural and frontier Colorado. He practiced family medicine in several rural communities including Limon, Ft Morgan, and his hometown of Yuma. He added Medication Assisted Treatment for opioid use disorder to his clinical care in 2016.The work of the HPRN and its participatory, Community Advisory Council has included funding from the CDC, NIH, AHRQ, and numerous state and local foundations. After retiring from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, he worked for several years as the Director for Whole Person Care at Santa Clara County Health and Hospitals in San Jose, California. He served for several years as the Director of the Robert Graham Center for policy research in primary care and family medicine in Washington DC. Returning to Colorado, he continues to consult and collaborate on primary care practice-based research, community-based participatory research, integrated primary care and behavioral health, and the interface between primary care, public, and community health. In addition to joining the faculty of the University of Toronto, Jack practices family medicine part-time in his hometown of Yuma, Colorado.
Dr. Karen Weyman
Education Lead
Dr. Weyman is the Education Lead, a role that provides leadership, strategic advice, and advocacy in supporting Ontario Health-Toronto Region and DFCM education programming. Dr. Weyman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, and the Family Physician-in-Chief of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital. Since joining the St. Michael’s Hospital in 1993, she has been a passionate advocate for underserved populations. From 1993 to 2015, Dr. Weyman was the Medical Director at Covenant House Toronto, the largest youth shelter in Canada. Dr. Weyman has also had a sustained interest in medical education, with a focus on mentorship, creating a positive learning environment and longitudinal learning. She holds a Master of Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and is a past program director of undergraduate education at St Michael’s Hospital. In addition to her leadership roles, she continues to provide comprehensive primary care, and teach and mentor medical students and residents.
Dr. Catherine Yu
Engagement Lead
Dr. Yu is the Engagement Lead, a role that will support a coordinated approach to Ontario Health Teams primary care leadership. Dr. Yu is an Assistant Professor at DFCM and a community and family physician. She is Medical Director of Health Access Thorncliffe Park. An emergency physician for more than 10 years, she is now a passionate advocate for her community patients. In 2019, she received the Ontario College of Family Physicians Award of Excellence for her leadership in supporting vulnerable populations. Dr. Yu is also Chair of the Board of Directors for the East Toronto Family Practice Network, a community of family physicians with a mission to create equitable access to inter-professional care for all family practices.