Grad - Onye and Barry

Dr. Onye Nnorom

MDCM, CCFP, MPH, FRCPC

ASSOCIATE PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Dr. Onye Nnorom is a Family Doctor and a Public Health & Preventive Medicine specialist. She is the Associate Program Director of the Public Health & Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Toronto, and is the Black Health Theme Lead for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. As the Black Health Theme Lead, she is tasked with developing educational content for teaching medical students about Black Canadian health, and inequities due to systemic racism. She is also a clinical consultant for the Nicotine Dependence Clinic at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

She is the President of the Black Physicians' Association of Ontario. She was also the chronic disease prevention lead at TAIBU Community Health Centre, where she led a number of successful cancer screening initiatives. Most recently she has taken the role as the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Lead, within the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. And she is the host of a podcast called Race, Health and Happiness where she interviews successful Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, providing wisdom on how to stay well in a “racialized world”.

Dr. Nnorom completed her medical degree at McGill University and then completed a Masters of Public Health (Epidemiology) and residency training at the University of Toronto. Being of Nigerian and Trinidadian heritage, she is particularly interested in Black community health and wellness, and racism as a social determinant of health.

Dr. Barry Pakes

MD, MPH, CCFP, FRCPC, PhD

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Dr. Barry Pakes is a Public Health and Preventive Medicine physician with a practice focus in local public health, as well as public health and global health education and ethics. He is a graduate of the Public Health Preventive Medicine specialty training program at the University of Toronto and has degrees from McGill, Harvard, and the Gorgas Institute in Lima, Peru. He earned his PhD in Public Health Ethics at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Pakes’ recent Public Health leadership roles have included as Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Health in Nunavut, AMOH in London Middlesex, AMOH in Halton Region, and most recently as AMOH with the Region of Peel as part of the COVID response.

He has worked and taught in local and global public health settings including as a Senior Ethics Fellow at the WHO, in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Kerala and Israel. Dr. Pakes also practices emergency medicine and primary care in Northern Ontario communities, is a travel clinic medical director and supervises medical residents at Mount Sinai Hospital. He is currently the Global Health Lead for Postgraduate Medical Education, Program Director of the Public Health and Preventive Medicine residency program and Program Director for the Global Health Education Initiative at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (University of Toronto).