Carol P. Herbert

Carol is Professor Emerita of Family Medicine and Adjunct Research Professor of Pathology at Western University (London, Canada), and Adjunct Professor, in the School of Population & Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and in the Faculty of Education at UBC (Vancouver, Canada). She is a Senior Associate at In-Source, a Vancouver-based consulting company that applies a complex adaptive systems lens to health care. She served as Dean, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario from 1999-2010. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia in Honours Biochemistry and in Medicine. After internship and additional training in Pediatrics, she was a full-service community family physician and clinical instructor at the REACH community health centre, a UBC teaching facility in Vancouver, from 1971 until 1982 when she joined the full-time faculty in the UBC Department of Family Practice. She was founding Head of the UBC Division of Behavioural Medicine, a co-founder of the UBC Institute of Health Promotion Research, and Royal Canadian Legion Professor and Head of the UBC Department of Family Practice from 1988-98. She is former Editor of the international journal, Patient Education and Counseling and serves on the editorial boards of the Annals of Family Medicine, Healthcare Papers, and Patient Education and Counseling. She is currently President of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2015-2017) and Vice-chair of the Board of the American University of the Caribbean.

Carol has been committed to social justice and access to health care throughout her career. Under her decanal direction, Schulich grew in size and reputation as a socially responsible medical school which provides exceptional student experience in a research-intensive environment, including community-based experience for all MD graduates. She spearheaded development of the Southwestern Ontario Medical Education Network which includes a regional campus in Windsor as well as partner communities across southwestern Ontario. She was a pioneer in developing services for sexually assaulted adults and children in B.C. and was co-founder and co-director of the Sexual Assault Service for Vancouver (1982-88). She is a recognized leader in inter-professional education and collaborative practice, women’s health and mentorship of academic women. She has chaired or served on multiple task forces on health policy and health professional education.

She is internationally known for her leadership in primary care research, and for her work in clinical health promotion, patient-physician decision-making, and participatory action research with aboriginal communities, focused on diabetes and on environmental effects on human health. She was instrumental in introducing participatory research to the primary care research community and co-authored widely-used Guidelines for Participatory Research in Health Promotion. Currently she serves on the Institute Advisory Board for the CIHR Institute of Gender & Health.

She has received many awards, including the Wood Award for Lifetime Achievement in Family Medicine Research; McWhinney Award for Family Medicine Education; and the AAMC Women in Medicine Leadership Development Award. She is a founding Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and Foreign Associate Member of the Institute of Medicine, U.S. National Academies of Science.

Carol is married to Fred Swartz; their blended family includes 6 children and 10 grand-children.