Two $1 million donations will help support UBC’s Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health, created in 2014 to train more Aboriginal health providers, to optimize indigenous curriculum in the health sciences, and to foster research into Aboriginal health issues. Both gifts are dedicated to the centre’s goal of recruiting and retaining Aboriginal students in UBC’s health professional programs and ensuring Aboriginal people are encouraged to pursue health sciences from an early age and are supported throughout their careers.

In May 2015, five Aboriginal students earned MDs from the Faculty of Medicine, bringing the number of Aboriginal students who have graduated from UBC under its Aboriginal MD Admissions Program to 54. Created in 2001, the program had been aiming to graduate 50 students by 2020.

The centre’s co-directors are Dr Nadine Caron, an assistant professor of surgery based in UBC’s Northern Medical Program in Prince George and the first Aboriginal woman to earn a medical degree from UBC, and Dr Martin Schechter, an epidemiologist who specializes in HIV and urban health, and the former director of the School of Population and Public Health.

The gifts were received from Chancellor Lindsay Gordon and his wife Elizabeth, and from Rudy, Patricia, Caroline, and Rory North.