Honorary Medical Alumni Award

The Honorary Medical Alumni Award recognizes a member of the UBC Faculty of Medicine Community who has made a significant contribution as a committed clinician, teacher, mentor or administrator; thereby advancing the goals of the UBC Faculty of Medicine.

For questions, please contact us at 604-875-5674 or med.alumni@ubc.ca.

Congratulations to the 2023 Honorary Medical Alumni Award Recipients:

James Andrew, BSc’96

James Andrew, a member of Lil’wat Nation’s Mount Currie Band, has been with the University of British Columbia for more than 25 years. Twenty-one of those years has been with the Faculty of Medicine as the Indigenous Student Initiatives Manager where his role was to recruit and support the Indigenous medical students through the Indigenous Pathway. The Indigenous Pathway program recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary in November 2022. To date, UBC Faculty of Medicine’s MD program has graduated more than 130 Indigenous physicians. He is currently the Associate Director of Indigenous Initiatives, Office of the Vice Dean, Education, Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Christie Newton

Dr. Christie Newton is an Associate Professor, and Associate Head (Education and Engagement) in the Department of Family Practice, and the Associate Vice President Health (pro tem) in the Office of the Vice President Health. She moved to BC in 2001 to be closer to her husband’s family (Dr. Darin Tognotti, a UBC Faculty of Medicine Alumni). Wanting to continue to practice in an academic teaching setting, Dr. Newton reached out to the Department upon arrival in Vancouver, and started in the UBC Family Practice Teaching Unit on the Vancouver campus in January of 2002. By 2005 she was fully integrated into UBC faculty. She was appointed as Assistant Professor and Medical Director of the teaching clinic; she was Chair of the Health care Team Challenge for the College of Health Disciplines and she was leading the design of an interprofessional teaching clinic planned to move into the new David Strangway building.

Since 2005, Dr. Newton has spent most of her academic career focused on interprofessional and collaborative health education across disciplines and across the educational continuum. Through her work she aims to shape the workforce of tomorrow, catalyze interdisciplinary collaboration in health research, and advocate for and assist in building capacity for positive health system change. Dr Newton has over 20 years of experience at UBC leading and serving on various committees all supporting the collaborative design, implementation and evaluation of interprofessional curriculum to enhance community-based collaborative practice. In her role as Associate Vice President Health (pro tem) she is currently working on the development of a new interprofessional teaching clinic on campus aimed at modelling and scaling collaborative health education within team-based primary care. She looks forward to the day when team-based practice education for collaborative team-based care is the standard in BC.