Robert F. Woollard, MD, CCFP, FCFP
Dr Woollard has completed two terms as Royal Canadian Legion Professor and Head of the Department of Family Practice, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
He has extensive national and international experience in the field of medical education, ecosystem health and international community development. He works extensively in the issue of the social accountability of medical schools and is currently actively involved in the development of a new national medical school founded on these principles in Nepal. He is also working in East Africa and Indonesia on social accountability, primary care and accreditation systems.
He is past chair of the Committee on the Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS) and the Committee on the Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education (CACME) and sat on the Executive of the international Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). He has chaired senior committees, councils and task forces for the BC Medical Association, Canadian Medical Association and the College of Family Physicians of Canada in the areas of medical education, environmental health and ethical relations with industry. His background in the full continuum of the life-long-learning of physicians has informed his commitment to understanding the links between medical education and health outcomes. He has assisted in the development of a rural practice undergraduate program, the design and development of the distributed expansion of UBC Medical School, and continues the active practice of medicine. He chaired a Task Group of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) charged with implementing the policy paper Social Accountability: A Vision for Canadian Medical Schools. At these various levels he is leading the development of five-way partnerships (policy makers/health managers/communities/ professional organizations/academy) to build responsive and responsible academic systems in support of responsive and responsible health care systems.
He is Co-chair of the Global Consensus for Social Accountability of Medical Schools that reached consensus among 130 organizations, institutions and individuals responsible for health education, professional regulation and policy making. This can be found at http://www.healthsocialaccountability.org . Medical and other schools thus defined as socially accountable will represent a new frontier of excellence and will work within a framework of quality, equity, relevance and effectiveness to improve health system performance and enhance the health status of all.
He is currently Vice Chair of the national advocacy organization Canadian Doctors for Medicare. He has been an active practitioner of Family Medicine for 38 years.
