Appointment: Dr. Maria Hubinette as Inaugural Canfield Distinguished Scholar in Patient Partnerships

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Maria Hubinette as the inaugural Canfield Distinguished Scholar in Patient Partnerships at UBC for a 3-year term until March 31, 2026.

We have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Hubinette on many notable projects over the years. Her research resulted in a novel framework to identify different approaches to health advocacy that is the foundation of a long-running workshop we developed together to involve patients in teaching health care students how to work with patients, families, communities and other health professionals to achieve systems change. 

She was also instrumental in the development of our ‘Space to Thrive’ Patient & Community Voices workshop with Justice for Girls and was most recently a co-investigator on our Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada funded project, Bringing Patients and Society Back into the Social Accountability of a Medical School, which resulted in a set of evidence-based guiding principles for patient involvement in health professional education that have been adopted by UBC’s Undergraduate Medical Education Committee.

As the inaugural Canfield Scholar, Dr. Hubinette will support research, as well as teaching and outreach initiatives in patient partnerships in health professional education. We look forward to working with Dr. Hubinette who will add to our scholarly work to advance patient involvement in health professional education.

The Canfield Distinguished Scholar in Patient Partnerships at UBC was established thanks to a generous donation from Carolyn Canfield, a citizen-patient advocate who we have also had the privilege of working with for many years. Carolyn’s contributions were integral to our collaboration with the community to create Patients in Education, a non-profit to promote patient involvement in education. She was also a co-investigator on our project to develop guiding principles for patient engagement and recently co-authored a paper with Angela Towle and Darren Lauscher (see next story).

We look forward to working with Dr. Hubinette in her new role and are grateful for Carolyn Canfield’s generous support, which made it possible. Stay tuned!