Wellesley Institute is pleased to welcome Dr. Gary Bloch as a Senior Fellow.
Gary is a family physician with St. Michael’s Hospital and Inner City Health Associates. His research, clinical, education, program development, and advocacy interests focus on the intersection between social risks to health and front line health care. He has led the development of internationally recognized clinical tools, including a Clinical Tool on Poverty, and the development of clinical programs and educational curricula. He serves as co-Chair of the St. Michael’s Hospital Family Health Team’s Social Determinants of Health Committee, and in that position has overseen the creation and implementation of a multifaceted, culture-shifting incorporation of interventions and approaches to the social determinants of health and health equity. He is currently serving as a Phoenix Fellow for the AMS Foundation.
Gary is a co-founder of Inner City Health Associates, a group of over 90 physicians working in homeless service settings across the Greater Toronto Area. He also co-founded the advocacy group Health Providers Against Poverty, and was the inaugural Chair of the Ontario College of Family Physicians’ Committee on Poverty and Health. He is a recognized social policy expert, and recently served on a working group on income security reform for the Government of Ontario. Gary’s work has been recognized locally, nationally, and internationally, and he is frequently asked to speak in academic and non-academic settings, as well as to the medical and popular media.
Gary has spent fifteen years examining the intersection of social risk to health and front line health care. In this time he has been involved in the development of educational curricula, innovative clinical programs, research, and evidence-based social policy. He has witnessed a strong upswing in health provider interest in, and action on, the social determinants of health and health equity. His current work focuses on developing an evidence-based framework for Canadian primary health care providers and health teams to incorporate action on the SDOH and health equity into the core of their practice. His research will focus on the generation and consolidation of an evidence base to support this framework development; and on the implementation, evaluation, and refinement of the model. He looks forward to engaging Wellesley Institute staff, fellows, and partners in the development, evaluation, and knowledge translation elements of this work, including ensuring it impacts health organization and government policy.
Please join us in welcoming him.