I’ve been working with ICHA both clinically and as the Population Health Lead this past year. I migrated to Toronto with my family as a teenager, born in India and raised in East Africa. Throughout my training and practice, I have been driven by a desire to serve those most marginalized by our society both as a physician and an activist. This desire has led me to aboriginal communities in Moose Factory and Sioux Lookout, low-income countries like Tanzania, India and Cote d’Ivoire and Toronto’s inner city where I have found my homebase. My desire to explore the broader population determinants also led me to Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where I completed a Master of Public Health. 

My current clinical work includes serving homeless men at ICHA’s newly expanded Inner City Family Health Team at 69 Queen St East, and serving marginalized women at Sistering, a women’s drop-in centre. The position as Population Health Lead has allowed me to explore various areas, such as quality improvement, EMR optimization, community outreach and more. My work with ICHA has been a constant reminder of the importance of the social determinants of health, and has led to involvement in various educational initiatives around poverty and health through the OCFP Poverty Committee. The group has been doing great work teaching medical students, residents and practising physicians about the importance of screening for poverty and using income interventions to improve the health of our patients. 

My involvement in activism began in medical school when I was introduced to the Medical Reform Group, an organization of physicians and medical students which advocates for a publicly-funded, not-for-profit health care system in Canada and has been around for decades. This work led me to co-found an organization called Students for Medicare with a similar mandate, most recently calling on the Canadian government to implement a national pharmacare program. Another great passion of mine has been the health and politics of migration, given my own history. This takes me to volunteer monthly at the Scarborough Community Volunteer Clinic which serves people without OHIP and political advocacy through an organization called Health for All which believes in access to health for all people in Canada, irrespective of immigration status. This involvement has culminated with the recent cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program, and work at the municipal level passing policies to ensure access without fear for Toronto’s migrant communities. 

Regardless of what issues are being discussed, however, I do my best to stay ahead of the technological curve, and can regularly be found livetweeting conferences or blogging about current events. My clinical and population health work with ICHA has allowed me to explore new dimensions in the world of medicine,  social determinants and technology and I am very grateful to work with such a brilliant group of people committed to the health of the marginalized in this city.