Laurentian to Grant Honorary Degree to Past Dean of Medicine

A former Dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine will receive an honorary degree for his role in setting up Northern Ontario’s first medical school.

Laurentian University will award Professor Arnie Aberman with an Honorary Doctorate of Laws for his work with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM). The school, established in 2005 by Laurentian and Lakehead University in Thunder Bay — 1,000 kilometres apart — has transformed health care in Ontario by training and retaining doctors and health professionals to practise in rural areas.

“I’m really pleased to receive this honour, because it’s a recognition of the impact the school has made on health services in Northern Ontario,” said Aberman, a Professor in the Department of Medicine who was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1992 to 1999. “It’s been a terrific success. There is no medical school in Canada that is more integrated with the community it serves.”

Students at NOSM do placements in remote areas, small and large cities, and with aboriginal and Métis communities. They train with over 1,000 faculty members in community hospitals, clinics and family practices. More than 90 per cent of students are from Northern Ontario, and almost one-third are francophone or aboriginal, in an average year. About two-thirds of MD graduates from the school have chosen family medicine, improving access to primary care in underserviced rural areas.

“The presence of students and teachers in Northern Ontario health care settings has led to a greater breadth and quality of health services, and enabled better recruitment of health professionals to remote communities,” said Catharine Whiteside, Dean of U of T’s Faculty of Medicine. “The school is an outstanding example of distributed medical education, and it’s becoming a model for improving care in rural areas across Canada and around the world.”

Aberman was the only one of the school’s five-member Implementation Management Committee with experience running a medical school. He gave advice on accreditation, curriculum development and distance education, and came up with a solution for the challenge of establishing one faculty of medicine within two universities: the school as a not-for-profit corporation, with an independent board for fiscal matters and a line of reporting to each university for academic affairs. It was a unique governance model for a faculty of medicine, without precedent in North America.

“Success has many parents, and failure is an orphan,” said Aberman. “This school’s achievements are the result of hard work by countless individuals in medicine, academia, government and the private sector. Most of all, community involvement across Northern Ontario has been tremendous, and I’m most proud of that.”

Aline Chrétien, the Chancellor of Laurentian University, will present Aberman with the honorary doctorate at a convocation ceremony on June 4.