Blog Post
Dr. Carol P. Herbert, FCAHS, is a Professor of Family Medicine at Western University who also served as Dean of the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University. Early in her career, Dr. Herbert was a community family physician and clinical instructor at the REACH community health centre in Vancouver. She was also 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. Dr. Herbert is a member of the Council of Canadian Academies’ Board of Governors.
Q: What do you see as being the value of the Council?
A: The Council brings together highly respected and knowledgeable Canadian and international leaders in arts and science, engineering, and the health sciences to consider the evidence and provide advice on questions of importance to Canada’s development and prosperity. The far-ranging reports produced to date are evidence of the breadth and depth of the interests of the Council and its member Academies.
Q: As one of two CAHS Fellows on the Council’s Board of Governors, what kind of role do you hope to play?
A: I will ensure that the Board is aware of the achievements and concerns of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and how Board decisions may impact on CAHS. I also hope to advance collaboration among the three member academies.
Q: Can you share one or two career highlights?
A: I began my practice in a community health centre in east Vancouver, thinking that I would eventually take specialty training, because I had been told as a student that I shouldn’t be “just a family doctor.” But I found that I loved being a generalist with a wide range of interests and skills and the good sense to collaborate and refer to others when needed. I was a full-service family physician (including obstetrics and hospital care) involved in teaching students and doing community-based research right from the start. When I moved to an academic practice 11 years later, it was because I wanted to expand my teaching and research to make even more of a difference. I continued to practise as a family doctor through my term as Head of the UBC Department of Family Practice, until I left the province to become Dean at Western University.
As Dean of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western, I incorporated the notion of social responsibility into the mission of our School. A central tenet of that mission is meeting the needs of communities for physician access in Southwestern Ontario and throughout Canada. I led the development of the Southwestern Ontario Medical Education Network (SWOMEN) and helped establish a second campus for medical education in Windsor and expand our rural and regional educational network. This enabled us to increase admissions from 96 to 171 medical students annually and to expand residency training throughout the region. We also developed a successful program to attract and support Aboriginal students.
My passion has been, and continues to be, mentorship of students at all levels and of academic leaders, particularly in health education and research. I have had the privilege of breaking new ground as one of the first female department heads in Family Medicine and one of the two first female Deans of Medicine in Canada. I was encouraged by wonderful mentors, so I’m “paying it forward” as role model and coach whenever I can.
Q: As an affiliate member of the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at Western University, do you have any insights into the problem of attracting and retaining female students and researchers in certain STEM fields, such as engineering?
A: I recently completed a case study with two colleagues on the transformation of a department of surgery with a lone woman out of 60 members into a family-friendly department with 14 women out of 80 members, across the array of sub-specialties. Both male and female junior faculty reported that they were encouraged by a visionary department Chair, role models who were successfully balancing their complex lives, administrative advances such as permissible delays of promotion and tenure decisions during maternity leave, and more manageable on-call schedules. Faculty members are still stretched to meet personal goals of work-life balance, particularly in the early years when they are establishing practices and developing their academic dossiers as teachers and researchers. The pressure is especially intense for women who make the decision to have children. It remains to be seen whether some of the more recent recruits will leave academe to become community-based surgeons so that they are “only” balancing practice and family.
I don’t think the situation is fundamentally different for women in engineering. We need enough role models in the professoriate so that women can feel “normal,” rather than marginalized, when they have to make compromises in order to balance their commitments. We need to reconsider career trajectories to recognize that delayed childbearing with consequent career interruptions can be accommodated, without inducing guilt or deprecating the academic commitment of individuals who love their work — but also love their families. We need academic leaders who consider retention as important as recruitment. What is exciting is that more girls and young women are studying mathematics and science, just as they are playing ice hockey and soccer. So we are filling the pipeline, but we need to keep the flow.
Q: You do a lot of work educating the general population as well as formal students — hospital patients, for instance, and Aboriginal communities have been the focus of some of your outreach. How do you approach this type of “STEM education” outside the classroom?
A: I was privileged to be born in Canada, into a family that valued education and supported me, both morally and materially, to achieve my goals. As a physician, I have had more income than most Canadians, which has allowed me to balance work and family more easily than many hard-working people who are financially unable to afford childcare. I recognize that I have both power and privilege that have enabled my success. I consider it my responsibility to try to level the playing field. Consequently, a participatory research approach that is geared towards action and develops community capacity appeals to me, particularly when working with structurally disadvantaged populations, such as women living in poverty or Aboriginal communities. Similarly, I have taken the opportunity to develop programs that provide compassionate care to those who have been less advantaged. Examples include the first medical program to address the sexual abuse of children in Vancouver and a comprehensive Sexual Assault Service that is still operating 30 years later.
When I have the chance to demystify medicine and health care, I enjoy doing so. My hope has been that people with whom I have interacted have felt empowered to ask questions, seek alternative solutions, and make informed health decisions. I also know that at least a few people who never imagined themselves as health professionals have become doctors, nurses, or other health practitioners, at least in part because of our interaction.