Like much of rural, remote and northern Canada, the people of Northern Ontario—some 800,000—don’t have access to equitable health-care services. In fact, Northern Ontario needs more than 350 doctors just to fill immediate shortages.
The determinants of health are worse in Northern Ontario.
The harsh reality is that people in the North live shorter, less healthy lives than people in the south. People in the region have the highest rates in Ontario for addictions, mental health, cardiac disease, cancer, and diabetes, and a life expectancy that is, on average, two years shorter than the rest of the province.
Exacerbating those dire facts: a high number of far north and remote First Nations communities face multi-generational roadblocks to health, including food insecurity and decades-long boil water advisories.
NOSM University is part of the solution.
As Canada’s first-ever independent medical university, we are doing everything we can to help marshal doctors to where they’re needed most. We were formally established by provincial legislation on April 1, 2022 as the new iteration of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, NOSM University—a pan-Northern medical university originally established in 2005 to address the ongoing shortages of physicians in the region.
Alongside more than 90 community partners, we have created innovative, tailor-made learning opportunities and partnerships designed to help fill gaps in rural, Indigenous, Francophone and other underserved areas of the North.
As of June 2022, we have graduated 838 doctors (65 of whom are Indigenous and 171 of whom are Francophone), and more than half of these physicians have stayed in Northern Ontario. Together, they have helped more than 340,000 people. There’s a lot to show for our short history but the work is not yet done, and a significant expansion of our medical programs is now under way.
NOSM University is training these doctors, but we need to lighten the tuition load for our students and even the playing field for Northern learners.
Our students graduate with nearly twice the debt of students at other medical schools in Canada. It’s not because we’re more expensive: it’s because we recruit from the North, for the North, and typically, people in the region don’t have access to the same financial and social means as students in the south.
With your help, we will raise the first $50 million for NOSM University’s Student Endowment Fund.
Here’s how your donation helps.
When you give to NOSM University you are:
- Telling 800,000 Ontarians that their health matters
- Championing Indigenous and Francophone health equity
- Backing future health-care workers who are more likely to stay in the North
- Investing in a lean and fiscally accountable non-profit public university
- Establishing an endowment that will benefit students in perpetuity
- Supporting a world-class medical and research enterprise
- Supporting the mission of NOSM University toward health justice for Northern Ontario
No matter where you live, you deserve the dignity of equitable access to culturally-competent health care from someone who understands your unique circumstances. That includes people who live in the North.
Be a part of the solution. Go to future.nosm.ca.
