Wider Campus of NOSM University
Devil’s Rock, Temiskaming Shores
Northern Ontario is home to thousands of natural lakes, vertical granite cliffs, expansive forests, meandering rivers and streams, and a seemingly endless variety of inspiring landscapes. Though home to only six percent of the province’s population, Northern Ontario comprises nearly 90 percent of the province’s geography.
Nurtured by their surroundings, the people of Northern Ontario are passionate about their roots in the North. In fact, Northern Ontarians fought for and inspired the creation of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), now NOSM University, which was developed to help realize the dream that all Northern Ontarians—no matter where they live—have access to quality health care.
Since its inception, NOSM University has proudly defied traditional health professional education.
Born of a grassroots movement by Northern Ontarians needing health professionals, NOSM University is like no other. No other Canadian medical school provides training in more than 90 communities across a geographic expanse of 800,000 square kilometres. Rather than taking an off-the-shelf approach to delivering health professional programs modelled after traditional methods, NOSM University developed novel education strategies to meet the needs of Northern Ontarians.
NOSM University’s education is quite literally “all over the map,” taking learners out of the classroom and into your backyard. Learners are woven into the fabric of Northern Ontario communities. They learn in context about the determinants of health that are relevant to the region, with the hopes that their experiences will win over hearts and minds, and encourage them to return upon completion of their training. And it’s working.
You don’t have to look far to find the source of the University’s success. Northern Ontarians have made NOSM University what it is—a locally grown solution to regional health inequalities, and an international leader in distributed, community-engaged health professional education and research.