This week, we celebrate UBC’s 2021 honorary degree recipients in health who are making a difference in their communities both globally and locally.
Dame Sally Davies
Dame Sally Davies is an eminently respected British medical scientist, Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and former Chief Medical Officer for England. She joined the United Kingdom Civil Service in 2004 as Director-General of Research and Development at the Department of Health. In this role, she was instrumental in creating the National Institute for Health Research, now the largest national clinical research funder in Europe.
Victor Dzau
Dr. Victor J. Dzau is one of the world’s pre-eminent leaders in health research and policy and a trailblazer in translational research. A graduate of McGill University, he has served since 2014 as the US President of the National Academy of Medicine, and Vice Chair of the US National Research Council. An internationally acclaimed scholar in the field of cardiovascular medicine and genetics, he helped create the science underlying the class of drugs known as ACE inhibitors, used globally to treat hypertension and heart failure. He is a pioneer in cardiovascular gene therapy. Dr Dzau is also world renowned for his leadership in global health and in developing major national and international collaborative health policy initiatives.
Bonnie Henry
Dr. Bonnie Henry is the Provincial Health Officer and a former physician epidemiologist for the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. The calm, assured face of the COVID-19 pandemic response in BC, she has led the government initiative from a rational, scientific perspective, garnering accolades from across Canada and internationally. Her specialized work in public health and preventive medicine also includes critical international initiatives such as the WHO/UNICEF polio eradication program in Pakistan and the World Health Organization’s response to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda. She is the author of two books “Soap and Water and Common Sense” and “Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe: Four Weeks That Shaped The Pandemic.”
Tasuku Honjo
A Nobel laureate and renowned Japanese physician-scientist, Tasuku Honjo is a Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director-General of the Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study. He is best known for his work in discovering a critical pathway in the immune response to cancer cells, for which he and American immunologist James P. Allison were jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Their discovery has opened the way for the development of novel treatments against certain cancers, particularly melanoma.
Heather Munroe-Blum
Heather Munroe-Blum is a distinguished university leader, a scholar in the fields of psychiatric epidemiology, public policy and governance, and an accomplished businesswoman. From 1994 to 2002 she served as Vice-President, Research and International Relations, at the University of Toronto and subsequently became the first woman to be appointed Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, a position she held for over a decade until 2013. She has also served on the boards of numerous publicly traded companies and not-for-profit organizations and has been an influential advocate for universities as vehicles to advance social and economic growth.
Elder Roberta Price
For over 30 years, Elder Roberta Price has actively shared her leadership, wisdom and teachings at UBC and throughout the Lower Mainland to assist both Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members to achieve improved outcomes in health care. A member of the Coast Salish Snuneymuxw and Cowichan Nations, she has been instrumental in helping to create shared spaces for both Indigenous and Western approaches to healing and health. Her ongoing involvement and leadership in research projects have been key to the continued work of decolonizing health care and creating cultural safety and equity for Indigenous patients.