Dr. Bradly Wouters: ‘I fear that once the crisis of COVID fades, the public will forget us’

Dr. Bradly Wouters: ‘I fear that once the crisis of COVID fades, the public will forget us’

I fear that once the crisis of COVID fades, the public will forget us and we’ll retreat into our scientific bubble. We cannot let that happen. We scientists have to do a better job of communicating beyond our bubble, of sharing the excitement and impact of what we do and how we work. Because the support for science and the important work that we do ultimately comes from the public.

Dr. Brad Wouters, UHN’s Executive Vice President, Science and Research, and Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, has penned an insightful article on the critical need to keep medical research, and the scientists who carry out this research in the public eye once the pandemic has subsided.

In his article, Dr. Wouters highlights the responsibility of this vital community to bridge the disconnect between themselves and the general public, to foster a better understanding of the crucial role the hospital-based research sector in Canada plays in generating innovations, better treatments, and cures that improve the lives of all Canadians, and perhaps improve the precarious and unreliable funding models that support this work.

HealthCareCAN, the national voice of healthcare organizations and hospitals across Canada, is working hard on behalf of our members to advance this effort among policy-makers at the federal level. In our 2021 prebudget brief, we make several recommendations for the federal government to implement that would shore up our health system, and prevent future devastating disruptions to hospital-based research, like those that occurred at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.