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Every month, staff, researchers, physicians, learners and teams across Unity Health Toronto celebrate important honours, achievements and awards. Congratulations to all who’ve been recognized in April!

Dr. Ali Abbass, anesthesiologist at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, was awarded the very first Sustainability Award for Excellence in Healthcare from the Vinyl Institute of Canada. The award recognizes his commitment and passion to advance recycling and sustainability efforts in hospitals.

Dr. Ali Abbass

Dr. Anna Dare, St. Michael’s physician and researcher, has been named a CIHR Health System Impact Embedded Early Career Researcher. Dare’s research examines how individual-level social determinants of health impact and mediate cancer outcomes for patients, with the goal of using this knowledge to address the social determinants of health within clinical care and improve cancer outcomes.

Dr. Anna Dare

Dr. Alexandra Harris, Unity Health Toronto senior director of nursing, practice and education and researcher, has been named a Young Executive Leader by the International Hospital Federation. The recognition means that Harris will be able to participate in a program to gain new management and leadership skills and network internationally.

Dr. Alexandra Harris

Dr. Nazik Hammad, oncology physician at St. Michael’s, received a nomination for a Conquer Cancer Mentorship Award. The award recognizes women in oncology who are leaders, role models and mentors to other women training to be cancer clinicians, educators, or researchers.

Dr. Nazik Hammad

Dr. Boris Hinz, scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, and PhD student Fereshteh Younesi co-led a review that was published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Review Molecular Cell Biology. The paper, which reviewed how fibroblasts are activated to cause fibrosis and organ scarring, had an outstanding Impact Factor of 113.91!

Dr. Boris Hinz
Fereshteh Younesi

Dr. Jenny Huang, geriatrician at St. Michael’s, received the Alzheimer Society Research Program Doctoral Award for her research project titled: An evaluation of dementia risk, effective cognitive interventions and their intersection with the social determinants of health in older adults with traumatic brain injury. The grant is for three years.

Dr. Jenny Huang

Unity Health Toronto’s Corporate Communications team won a Gold Quill Award of Merit for their Flu Campaign. The Protect Your Crew campaign, produced by Caitie Lehman, Kevin Saychareun, Yuri Markarov, Eduardo Lima, Ana Gajic and Olivia Lavery, merged positive public health messaging surrounding the flu vaccine with bright, colourful images and graphics that boosted team morale and cohesiveness. Great job! 

Unity Health Toronto’s AI team won the 2024 Solventum Health Care Innovation Team Award from the Canadian College of Health Leaders. As the only hospital-based, applied AI team in Canada, the Data Science and Advanced Analytics team clinched the award by demonstrating its leadership in harnessing the power of data, AI and analytics to revolutionize health care.

Several members of the St. Joseph’s Urban Academic Family Health Team were recognized by U of T’s Department of Family and Community Medicine. Congratulations to: Dr. Casimir Soare (Postrgraduate Award for Excellence in Teaching), Dr. Min Joon Lee (Postgraduate Award for Teaching Excellence) and Dr. Helen Zeng (2024 Esther and Saul Baker Award). Several other team members were nominated for awards, including Dr. Dana Newman and Dr. Julia Dmytryshyn.

The St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team won the 2024 Council of Ontario University Programs in Nursing (COUPN) Agency Recognition Award. The COUPN awards acknowledge outstanding work in teaching, student excellence, and overall contributions to nursing education.

The EPIC team at the University of Toronto, which includes Unity Health Toronto’s Drs. Sharmistha Mishra and Darrell Tan, received a $9.9 million investment from the Ontario government to help update the Toronto High Containment facility. The facility allows researchers to study high-risk pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, HIV, tuberculosis and mpox, in a safe and secure way.