By Staff
November 18th, 2021
BURLINGTON, ON
The Ontario College of Family Physicians announces an Award of Excellence given to Burlington family physician Dr. Jennifer Kwan.
Dr. Jennifer Kwan
The College of Family Physicians of Canada Awards of Excellence recognize family doctors for exceptional achievement within the past 24 months in the specialty of family medicine. Nominations are made by peers or the public and are submitted to the provincial chapter of which the nominee is a member.
“These doctors have demonstrated tremendous leadership, dedication and service to their communities – Dr. Kwan, especially through her advocacy and public education on COVID-19.
Dr. Kwan exemplifies the vital role family physicians play across Ontario as clinicians, advocates, teachers, and researchers
Dr. Kwan at her work station.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Jennifer Kwan has become a household name, known for the public health data she disseminated daily via Twitter (@jkwan_md). For more than a year and a half, she has presented information in a simple, transparent graphical format, making her Twitter feed a go-to resource for many. Physicians and the public alike find reliable data about COVID cases, testing, hospitalizations, vaccinations, trends over time, and more—enabling Ontarians to see how our behaviours were shaping the pandemic.
At a crucial point of the pandemic, Dr. Kwan led projects to provide health facilities with needed personal protective equipment (PPE). That included building an online portal to facilitate PPE donations and, as a director of the Halton Region Chinese Canadian Association, helping to coordinate the donation of more than 5,000 masks and other PPE to local physicians’ offices and care providers at a time when these were scarce. Dr. Kwan was also an early advocate for public masking and helped found the grassroots volunteer group, Masks4Canada, whose efforts contributed to Canada’s eventual adoption of a masking policy.
Faced with threats and insults from naysayers on social media, Dr. Kwan has persevered in sharing reliable information, which she believes empowers Ontarians to understand their own health. She has appeared on media programs to promote public health messages and help Ontarians understand how the pandemic is affecting them. It should come as no surprise, then, that she is highly respected among infectious disease and other colleagues: Her nomination for the Award of Excellence was signed by over 70 physicians in all different specialties from across the province.
“Dr. Kwan has been nothing short of a powerhouse during the pandemic,” said Dr. Gina Eom, University of Toronto. “She has been an inspirational leader, and physicians all across the province have appreciated her work which she has undertaken on her own mission, without any financial or academic incentive.”
Thank you Dr. Jennifer Kwan for your efforts to inform those with interest in Ontario’s COVID-19 infection status via Twitter.
And she still has time to see her patients. I am very lucky to have her as my Doctor.
“Faced with threats and insults from naysayers on social media” and we are sure other sources seems to be a common thread for tnose who work hard to ensure the truth is delivered as it should be to help families make evidence based decisions for those who depend on them to do so. Thank you Dr. Kwan for staying the course that many find too hard to do. Setting down your experiences in accomplishing what you did in a book would be extremely helpful.