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NOSM University’s Dr. Erin Cameron awarded national Fellowship in Compassion and Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Erin Cameron, Academic Director of NOSM University’s Dr. Gilles Arcand Centre for Health Equity, has been awarded a prestigious Fellowship in Compassion and Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the Associated Medical Services (AMS) Healthcare.

Through the one-year Fellowship, Dr. Cameron will explore the role of trust between patients and their health-care providers and will study how recent innovations in AI are transforming these relationships.

Together with AI-NORTH, an established network of clinicians, researchers, educators, students, policy leaders, and community groups, she will host a series of community cafes and workshops that will engage diverse voices and perspectives.

“Innovations in AI are transforming patient care in Canada, but so far, most AI research has occurred in large cities. There are growing calls for AI research that is responsive to the unique needs of rural and Northern Canada,” says Dr. Cameron.

Dr. Cameron is one of AMS Healthcare’s 12 Fellows in Compassion and Artificial Intelligence. Spanning multiple disciples, the Fellows were selected as leaders to transform the ways people think about health care and to address how compassion and technology will work together to address the rapid changes occurring in health care today.

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NOSM University is Canada’s first independent medical university and one of the greatest education and physician workforce strategy success stories of Northern Ontario. More than just a medical university, it was purpose-built to address the health needs of the region. While advocating for equitable access to care, the university contributes to the economic development of Northern Ontario. NOSM University relies on the commitment and expertise of the peoples of Northern Ontario to educate health-care professionals to practise in Indigenous, Francophone, rural, remote, and underserved communities. With a focus on diversity, inclusion, and advocacy, NOSM University is an award-winning, socially accountable organization renowned for its innovative model of distributed, community-engaged education and research.

For further information, please contact news@nosm.ca. 

In the Spotlight

Physiotherapist Brock Chisholm honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award

If you’re a rehabilitation professional in Northern Ontario, chances are good that Brock Chisholm was among the first people to give you a warm welcome to the region. A new award—the Health Sciences Lifetime Achievement—was given at NOSM University’s Northern Connections preceptor dinner and recognized Chisholm’s longstanding contribution to rehabilitation sciences.

Currently the Physiotherapy Clinical Learning Liaison for Rehabilitation Sciences at NOSM University, Chisholm is an exceptional ambassador for living and working in Northern Ontario—and he has been for more than 30 years. The award recognizes his longstanding contribution to clinical education, academics and scholarly work, recruitment and retention, promoting the importance of collaboration in clinical education, and for being a leading example of the values of the University.

“I was surprised, honoured, and humbled to receive the award. I had no idea I was receiving it. The award didn’t exist—it had never been given or been discussed, so it was quite a surprise,” says Chisholm. “The event organizers had given a pretext for my wife to attend the dinner, and it was very special that she could be there.”

In his 30-plus years in clinical education, Chisholm’s title and employer have changed—his involvement pre-dates the creation of NOSM by more than a decade—but his passion for working with learners and preceptors has remained constant.

Chisholm recounts when he first became a clinical educator in 1991: “When Sue Berry started recruiting for the Rehabilitation Sciences clinical education program that was associated with the Northwestern Ontario Medical Program (NOMP), I was asked to go to Quetico for a training session. I was up for anything as a new graduate! It was the inaugural clinical educators session. Shortly afterwards, I had my first learners. I loved it and was hooked on clinical education and teaching after that.”

In 2000, he took on the role of placement coordinator for physiotherapy, and he’s never looked back.

“This role allowed me to interact with both the clinical preceptors throughout the region, and the new learners who could potentially become health-care providers in the North. This engagement at all levels and in all Northern communities completely resonated with me, because I love engaging with people. It gave me a forum to work with everybody across Northern Ontario.”

Chisholm enjoys supporting preceptors and knows that they make a huge difference to health care. “Without preceptors, there is no clinical education,” he points out. “Making that connection to the students and sharing your passion is what teaching comes down to. We’re there for the preceptors, because they’re there for the students.”

A firm believer in the importance of NOSM University’s mission of recruiting health-care professionals, Chisholm points out that a significant number of Northern Ontario’s current rehabilitation professionals had placements in the North as students. Although he’s worked with hundreds of learners, Chisholm says his work always feels fresh.

“There are always new preceptors and new learners to meet, and each placement is unique and another opportunity to meet and welcome a potential new health-care provider to the region. It never gets stale and is always the first experience for each new learner. It’s always an opportunity to bring someone new up to Northern Ontario.”

He adds, “The difference is all around us—so many of the rehabilitation providers throughout Northern Ontario were once learners through our programs.”

NOSM University is known for educating physicians and health-care professionals to work in underserved communities; this means bringing people together across different disciplines and professions. Chishom and his colleagues are highly regarded for their work to realize NOSM University’s mission by being active partners and enriching learner experiences in Kenora.

Colleagues and former learners congratulate Chisholm on his Lifetime Achievement Award in this video.

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Researchers at the Dr. Gilles Arcand Centre for Health Equity receive $2.43M SSHRC grant to address local health priorities

A new project, led by Dr. Erin Cameron, Academic Director at the Dr. Gilles Arcand Centre for Health Equity at NOSM University, has received a $2.43-million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant to address local health priorities.

Dr. Cameron and her team will foster relationships between communities and academics. The project will study how academic institutions can direct their education, research, and service activities to address community needs, both locally and globally. The growing global social accountability research movement urges academics to heed this call.

“Social accountability as a research movement is still largely under-studied. This project will explore the transformative potential of a socially accountable research network for fostering partnerships and institutional change. NOSM University—and its many strong institutional and organizational partnerships across Northern Ontario, in Canada, and around the world—are primed to lead this work,” says Dr. Erin Cameron.

Dr. Cameron, who is also an adjunct member in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University, is excited to invest in and strengthen partnerships across institutions, organizations, and communities regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Supported in part by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant of $2.43-million over seven years, the total project of $3.2-million focuses on collecting and sharing best practices related to social accountability and scaling existing research projects on social accountability across new sites and settings. The project will also build capacity for socially accountable research. Co-directors in the project, Drs. David Marsh, Joseph LeBlanc, and Alex Anawati, along with a team of over 20 researchers and 12 partner organizations, aim to create and grow a connected social accountability research network.

Established in 2021 as the Centre for Social Accountability, the Dr. Gilles Arcand Centre for Health Equity was born of the immutable conviction that everyone—regardless of circumstance or geography—deserves the dignity of equal access to health-care practitioners who are culturally competent, understand the realities of living in the rural and remote North, and lead with compassion and integrity.

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About this project

Learn more about the funded project, titled Community-engaged Research in Education, Advocacy, and system Transformation for advancing health Equity (CREATE): Exploring the Transformational Potential of Socially Accountable Research Networks Locally and Globally.

This funding will support a dynamic multidisciplinary team of:

  • Project co-directors: Alex Anawati (Health Sciences North), David Marsh (NOSM University), and Joseph LeBlanc (Lakehead University);
  • Co-applicants/collaborators: Alain Simard (NOSM University), Amy Clithero-Eridon (University of New Mexico), Brianne Wood (Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre), Claire Kendall (University of Ottawa), David Greenwood (Lakehead University), Jill Konkin (University of Alberta), Hoi Cheu (Laurentian University), Jill Allison (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Kathleen Sitter (University of Calgary), Lindsay Galway (Lakehead University), Maxwell Kennel (NOSM University), Nicole Ranger (NOSM University), Robert Woollard (University of British Columbia), Robyn Preston (CQUniversity), Roger Strasser (NOSM University), Shawna O’Hearn (Dalhousie University), Timothy Dubé (Université de Sherbrooke), Danielle Barbeau-Rodrigue (NOSM University), and Rachel Brown (NOSM University).
  • Partners: CQUniversity (Australia), George Washington University (Washington DC), Health Sciences North (Sudbury ON), Laurentian University (Sudbury ON), Memorial University of Newfoundland (St. John’s NL), NOSM University (Thunder Bay ON), The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (Ottawa ON), The Network: Towards Unity for Health (Philadelphia PA), The University of New Mexico (Albuquerque NM), Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (Thunder Bay ON), Training for Health Equity Network (Garden City NY), Université de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke QC)

About NOSM University

NOSM University is Canada’s first independent medical university and one of the greatest education and physician workforce strategy success stories of Northern Ontario. More than just a medical university, it was purpose-built to address the health needs of the region. While advocating for equitable access to care, the university contributes to the economic development of Northern Ontario. NOSM University relies on the commitment and expertise of the peoples of Northern Ontario to educate health-care professionals to practise in Indigenous, Francophone, rural, remote, and underserved communities. With a focus on diversity, inclusion, and advocacy, NOSM University is an award-winning, socially accountable organization renowned for its innovative model of distributed, community-engaged education and research.

For further information, please contact news@nosm.ca.

About Lakehead University

Lakehead University is a fully comprehensive university with approximately 9,700 full-time equivalent students and over 2,000 faculty and staff at two campuses in Orillia and Thunder Bay, Ontario. Lakehead has nine faculties, including Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Graduate Studies, Health & Behavioural Sciences, Law, Natural Resources Management, Science & Environmental Studies, and Social Sciences & Humanities. Lakehead University’s achievements have been recognized nationally and internationally, including being ranked in the top half of Times Higher Education‘s 2023 World Universities Rankings for the fourth consecutive year, and the number one university in the world with fewer than 9,000 students in THE’s 2023 Impact Rankings (which assesses institutions against the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals).

NOSM University