NOSM’s Founding Dean Emeritus receives Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

Dr. Roger Strasser, Founding Dean Emeritus of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada at an award ceremony held on April 27, 2021.

In the 17 years Dr. Strasser served as NOSM’s Founding Dean, he played a fundamental role in creating a medical school grounded in social accountability and with a specific mandate to educate physicians to practise in areas of need in Northern Ontario. He was instrumental in establishing the School to function as an independent, non-profit corporation with its own board of directors, receiving funding directly from the Ontario government for its health professional education and research programs.

As the first Canadian medical school established with an explicit social accountability mandate, Dr. Strasser’s influence at NOSM has had a lasting impact on both health care delivery in Northern Ontario and other medical schools in Canada and internationally that have since adopted the value of social accountability.

“I think one of the keys to the development of the School and its success is the social accountability mandate,” Dr. Strasser told the Royal College. “The founding documents that established the Northern Ontario School of Medicine were very specific about the social accountability mandate to the people of Northern Ontario. That’s very important. The School has always measured it’s success in terms of improving the health of the peoples and communities in Northern Ontario.”

An article from the Royal College says NOSM graduates laud his contribution to rural, socially responsible medicine. “By bringing this expertise to the Sudbury and Thunder Bay campuses of NOSM, he demonstrated to the region and to the country what innovation and determination can do,” says Dr. Jeniva Donaleshen, NOSM Alumna (MD, 2012). “After all, he initiated and implemented a strategy that would ultimately populate the northern, rural, and remote communities of Northern Ontario with family physicians and specialists alike.”

Up to four Honorary Fellows can be appointed per year by the Royal College Council. There is a long-standing tradition of offering Honorary Fellowship to the Governor General of Canada, the patron of the Royal College, at the commencement of the term of office.