Two prestigious public health awards were presented to two School of Population and Public Health professors recently.
Dr. Marcus Lem (SPPH) presents Dr. Reka Gustafson with the James M. Robinson Award
Reka Gustafson, Assistant Clinical Professor, SPPH receives the James M. Robinson Award for significant contributions to public health is a mid-career award, named for Dr. James McClure Robinson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology.
Dr. Gustafson has almost single-handedly, changed hospital and community physician HIV testing practice in Vancouver, as part of the STOP HIV/AIDS initiative. She accomplished this through good science, excellent knowledge translation, unrelenting advocacy, and extraordinary persistence. She has been the voice of reasoned science in CDC projects and programs across the province and continually links the most thoughtful reflection on data with the realities of public health practice and ethics.
Eric Young, Clinical Associate Professor, SPPH receives the George Elliot Award for lifetime contribution to public health is a mid to late career award, named for Dr. George Robert Ford Elliot. Dr. Elliot was the Acting Head of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of British Columbia in the 1960s and was both the Assistant Deputy Minister and Deputy Minister of Community Health Programs in the 1970s.
Dr. Marcus Lem (SPPH) presents Dr. Eric Young with the George Elliot Award
After completing his community medicine specialization in 1996, Dr. Young served as Associate Medical Officer of Health at the Scarborough Health Department and then moved to Regina to become Deputy Chief Medical Health Officer and Director of the Communicable Disease Control for Saskatchewan Health.
The awards were presented on March 26, 2015 at the BC Health Officers Council annual meeting by the School of Population and Public Health.