Kwame McKenzie | |
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| Born | |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | CEO, physician, professor |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Southampton University Medical School |
Kwame Julius McKenzie is a British-Canadian psychiatrist employed as the CEO of Wellesley Institute, a policy think tank based in Toronto, Ontario. McKenzie is a full professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He has worked as physician, researcher, policy advisor, journalist and broadcaster.
McKenzie was born in Southall in West London to Vida Louise McKenzie and Arthur McKenzie who immigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in the late 1950s. He attended Villiers High School, London and then Southampton University Medical School.
McKenzie was appointed as the CEO of the Wellesley Institute in May 2014. [1] He has worked a policy advisor across various levels of government, including provincial, federal and international.
He served as Chair of the Council of Canadian Academies’ panel on Mental Health and Medical Assistance in Dying, [2] Chair of the Health Equity External Advisory Committee at Health Quality Ontario and was appointed Commissioner at the Ontario Human Rights Commission in June 2016. [3]
He serves as a member of Employment and Social Development Canada's National Advisory Council on Poverty, [4] and is a Co-chair of the Expert Task Force on Substance Misuse under Health Canada. [5] He is the Medical Director of Health Equity at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). [6] He formerly sat on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Hospital Association, and on the Transition Planning Special Committee. [6] [7] He also serves on the Ontario Health Data Council for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. [8]
McKenzie was Chair of the Research and Evaluation Advisory Committee for the universal basic income pilot program in Ontario in 2017. [9] He has been a member of the board for United Way Toronto. [10]
McKenzie was a Canadian Delegate to the United Nations High-level Political Forum, the “central platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals”. [11] [12] He is also a consultant with the World Health Organization on equity. [13]
McKenzie is a member of the Mental Health Working Group on the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, [11] and a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on COVID-19 and Mental Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). [14]
He is also a member of the Minister of Health's COVID-19 Testing and Tracing Advisory panel alongside Kieran Moore, Chief Medical Officer of Health for Public Health Ontario. [15] A report published by the panel in March 2021 concluded that among other factors, teachers' COVID-19 vaccination status must be taken into account when developing and implementing school-based SARS-CoV-2 testing and tracing policies. [16]
In addition to his academic, policy and clinical work, Kwame has engaged in written media and radio programming.
McKenzie was also a presenter on All in the Mind on BBC Radio 4, and has previously been a columnist for The Times and The Guardian newspapers in the UK, writing on issues of health, racism and equity, [17] as well as being a frequent guest on Canadian radio and television.
In 2005 McKenzie wrote an article in The Times, UK about racial stereotyping in the 2005 film King Kong , co-written, produced, and directed by Peter Jackson. In the piece titled, "Big black and bad stereotyping", McKenzie described it as feeding "into all the colonial hysteria about Black hyper-sexuality." [18] The article received such a strong response from readers that McKenzie and The Times issued a challenge asking the public to find positive Black images on television during the holiday season. [19]
In December 2021, McKenzie wrote an opinion piece in the Toronto Star calling for a strategy to avert vaccine inequity in racialized children. [20]
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is a psychiatric teaching hospital located in Toronto and ten community locations throughout the province of Ontario, Canada. It reports being the largest research facility in Canada for mental health and addictions. The hospital was formed in 1998 from the amalgamation of four separate institutions – the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, the Addiction Research Foundation, and the Donwood Institute. It is Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital, and the only stand-alone psychiatric emergency department in Ontario. CAMH has 90 distinct clinical services across inpatient, outpatient, day treatment, and partial hospitalization models. CAMH has been the site of major advancements in psychiatric research, including the discovery of the Dopamine receptor D2.
Patricia Ann Capponi, was a Canadian writer and an advocate for mental health issues and poverty issues in Canada.
Kenneth J. Zucker is an American-Canadian psychologist and sexologist. He was named editor-in-chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2001. He was psychologist-in-chief at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and head of its Gender Identity Service until December 2015. Zucker is a professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Toronto.
Rise provides microfinancing and mentorship to eligible entrepreneurs living with mental health and addiction challenges, who are interested in pursuing self-employment. Rise offers business financing in the form of loans, leases and other investments, based on stage of development, needs and capacity. Rise provides business financing for up to $25,000 throughout Ontario, with an average loan of $3,000 to $5,000. The Rotman School of Management and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health participate in advisory functions, lending their respective expertise for business mentoring and mental health support and services for the benefit of Rise clients. In January 2012, Rise received the Social Entrepreneurship in Mental Health Equity Award from the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation Canada (DMRFC).
Wellesley Institute is a non-profit and non-partisan research and policy think tank in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its mission is to advance urban health and reduce health inequities through research and knowledge mobilization on the social determinants of health focusing on the relationships between health and housing, poverty and income distribution, social exclusion and other social and economic inequalities.
David Goldbloom, OC, MD, FRCPC is a Canadian psychiatrist, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, author, lecturer and mental health advocate. He most recently served from 2003-2022 as the Senior Medical Advisor of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and a psychiatric consultant. He has provided over many years lectures to students, colleagues, and the general public. Goldbloom has received various awards and recognition for his work in Psychiatry and is an honorary member of The College of Family Physicians of Canada.
Merrilee K. Fullerton is a Canadian physician and former politician who represented Kanata—Carleton in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 2018 to 2023. A member of the Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) Party, Fullerton was the minister of training, colleges, and universities from 2018 to 2019, minister of long-term care from 2019 to 2021, and minister of children, community and social services from 2021 to 2023.
John Norman Lavis is a Canadian physician based in Toronto, Ontario. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Health Evidence and Impact at McMaster University, where he founded and directs the McMaster Health Forum. He is co-lead of Rapid-Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE).
Bonnie J. Fraser Henry is a Canadian physician and public servant who has been the provincial health officer at the British Columbia Ministry of Health since 2014. Henry is also a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia. She is a specialist in public health and preventive medicine, and is a family doctor. In her role as provincial health officer, Henry notably led the response to COVID-19 in British Columbia (BC).
Allison Joan McGeer is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She also appointed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Senior Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and is a partner of the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases. McGeer has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SARS-CoV-2 survives in the air and has served on several provincial committees advising aspects of the Government of Ontario's pandemic response.
Peter Jüni is a Swiss physician, general internist, and epidemiologist based in England.
David N. Fisman is a University of Toronto professor in the area of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He also works as an infectious disease specialist and consultant at the University Health Network.
Kieran Michael Moore is a Canadian physician and public servant who serves as the current chief medical officer of health of Ontario. Prior to his appointment, he served as the medical officer of health for Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington from 2017 to 2021.
Naheed Dosani is a palliative care physician based in Ontario, Canada, who founded and leads the Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless (PEACH) program. For his efforts in providing mobile healthcare to individuals with vulnerable housing or are homeless, Dosani has received a Meritorious Service Cross from the Governor General of Canada (2017), and a Canadian Medical Association Award for Young Leaders (2020).
Anna Banerji M.D., O. Ont. is an academic, a Toronto infectious disease doctor, tropical disease specialist, pediatrician, public health specialist and an activist. She is the founder and chair of both the North American Refugee Health Conference in Canada, the Indigenous Health Conference and the co-founder of the Society of Refugee Healthcare Providers. She was awarded the Dr Peter Bryce Henderson for her advocacy for Indigenous children.
Vivian Stamatopoulos is a Canadian university academic and an advocate for better long term care in Ontario.
Asante Haughton is a Jamaican-born Toronto-based human rights and mental health advocate and the co-founder of Reach Out Response Network.
The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, often referred to simply as the Ontario Science Table (OST), was a group of independent scientific experts that provided advice to the Government of Ontario about COVID-19.
19 to Zero is a not-for-profit behavioural sciences initiative based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Hosted at the University of Calgary, the public–private partnership is made up of around 500 members including public health specialists, academics, behavioural psychologists, marketers and multimedia creators. Its purpose is to increase confidence in vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases by tackling vaccine hesitancy. The group publishes materials on its website and through partner organizations, including videos, billboards, presentations, brochures and in-person events.
Farooq Naeem is a British academic who is known for his work on cultural adaptation of cognitive behaviour therapy. He is also the founder of PACT. He is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
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