Ross Upshur

Dr. Ross Upshur is the Dalla Lana Chair in Clinical Public Health and Head of the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is also Scientific Director and Associate Director of Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation and Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health System, respectively aside from being a staff physician at Bridgepoint Active Healthcare at Sinai Health.

Biography
Ross Upshur received Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree (Hons.) at the University of Winnipeg and Master of Arts (MA) from Queen’s University in philosophy before receiving his MD from McMaster University in 1986. After 7 years of rural primary care practice he returned to complete his master’s degree in epidemiology and fellowship training in Community Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Ross Upshur is currently the Dalla Lana Chair in Clinical Public Health and Head of the Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Scientific Director, Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation and Associate Director of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System.  At the University of Toronto, he is a Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Family and Community Medicine, affiliate member of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology and Adjunct Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

In 2015, Dr. Upshur was named one of the Top 20 Pioneers in Family Medicine Research and Family Medicine Researcher of the Year, by the College of Family Physicians of Canada. Dr. Upshur is the former Director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics (2006-2011) and was Canada Research Chair in Primary Care Research (2005-2015).  He is a member of The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the College of Family Physicians of Canada. He was Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada from 2012-2017 and is currently the Chair of the Ethics Committee of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. In 2019 he was elected as a Fellow of the Hastings Center.

Research
Dr. Upshur’s research interests include managing complex chronic disease in aging adults, clinical measurement, the concept of evidence in health care, philosophy of medicine including medical epistemology and the integration of ethics and clinical reasoning, public health ethics, global health ethics, research ethics empirical approaches in bioethics, primary care research methods, time series applications in health services research, communicable disease and environmental epidemiology. He has consulted and served on ethics committees for the Public Health Agency of Canada, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders.

BOOKS
Books authored/co-authored by Dr. Upshur, so far, include:

  • Philosophy of Medicine, An Introduction (Routledge, 2017)a
  • An Introduction to Global Health Ethics (Routledge, 2012, e2013)b
  • ICES Atlas of Primary Care (2006)c

ARTICLES IN SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS
List of Dr. Ross Upshur’s publications are available on:

PODCASTS
Dr. Upshur hosts a series of podcasts titled  ”Conversations in Complexity that try to disentangle dilemma of complexity in healthcare.

See also:
* Ross Upshur’s biography on LTRI.

REFERENCES
a. Thompson, R. P., & Upshur, R. E. (2017). Philosophy of medicine: An introduction: Routledge.
b. Pinto, A. D., & Upshur, R. E. (2013). An introduction to global health ethics: Routledge.
c. Jaakkimainen L, Upshur R, Klein-Geltink JE, Leong A, Maaten S, S. S., & Wang L. (2006). Primary Care in Ontario: ICES Atlas.

EXTERNAL LINKS
* The Hastings Center: New Hastings Fellows Elected.

SOURCES
University of Toronto, Global Health Faculty Database
University of Toronto, Family & Community Medicine faculties
Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute Investigators