Disability Justice, Leadership and Inclusion in a New Era of Medicine

Dr. Pamela Liao is the Inaugural Disability Health Lead and Special Advisor to the Dean at the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Medicine, where she leads efforts to embed critical disability perspectives and anti-ableist practices into medical education. Drawing from her personal experience navigating medical training with a disability, she has dedicated her career to dismantling systemic barriers faced by individuals with disabilities in medicine. Her work includes groundbreaking research—such as the first analysis of accommodations policies in Canadian undergraduate medical programs—and advocacy efforts like the widely recognized "#docswithdisabilities" social media campaign, which brings attention to the underrepresentation of disabled individuals in healthcare and drives meaningful change.

In 2016, her advocacy earned her a place on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association of Physicians with Disabilities, where she continues to serve. Dr. Liao earned her medical degree from the University of British Columbia and completed her residency in Family and Community Medicine and a fellowship in Palliative Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and practices clinically in long-term care and rehabilitation settings. Her contributions have been recognized with several honors, including the OMA Section of Palliative Medicine – Award of Excellence.

Dr. Carrie Bernard received her medical degree from McMaster University in 1997 and completed her family medicine residency at the University of Toronto (UofT). She has practised comprehensive family medicine since 1999 with the Queen Square FHT in Brampton. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at UofT and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster.

Passionate about community and global health, Dr. Bernard received her MPH in 2012. She worked with Médecins Sans Frontières in northern Uganda in 2005, and Public Health Ontario from 2012 to 2019. She has held various leadership roles at McMaster and UofT, with her driving passion being empowering community-based family physicians to expand their scopes in both clinical and academic setting. She is the CPD and Partnerships Lead for the Division of Mental Health and Addictions at the DFCM and she is currently serving as president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Dr. Michael Quon is a General Internist at the Ottawa Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. After re-entering the workforce following a traumatic brain injury, he became a dedicated advocate to improve support and inclusion of physicians with disabilities and chronic conditions. He co-led the accessibility and accommodations policy for physicians with disabilities at the Ottawa Hospital, the first of its kind in Canada. He then collaborated with the Ontario Medical Association to raise awareness of physicians’ right to work with accommodations in the hospital environment.

Dr. Quon's perspective that well-being planning should address ableism was published in JAMA. He is the invited co-chair of an Inclusive Workforce working group for the Royal College National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. He is the physician lead of the national community of practice, Physician Health Inclusion, for physicians and medical trainees with disabilities and chronic conditions.

RJ Roggeveen is a second-year year medical student studying at Dalhousie University who is a co-executive of the Disability in Medicine Interest Group and part of Dalhousie’s Indigenous Medical Student Association Leadership Circle. RJ lives with a physical disability and has become an advocate for accessibility in healthcare and his community. In the hospital, RJ has been working with an interdisciplinary team to create policies and procedures around wheelchair use in the operating room. He has chosen to share his experiences with medical education and disability through social media (@rj_adapted (external link) ) and the Rolling Out Of Med (external link)  blog.