Cynthia Whitehead MD PhD

Cynthia Whitehead is an education scientist, educator, and family physician. Her research examines the effects of power relations on various structures, systems, processes, and practices in health professions education, paying attention to who and what is advantaged or disadvantaged as a result. She aims to use her research findings to promote health and education practices that are compassionate, equitable, and effective. Working at the intersection of health and higher education, she sees exciting opportunities to harness the transformative potential of education in service of a healthier world.

Cynthia’s program of research is anchored in critical historical analyses of health professions education. Knowing our history is vital for understanding our current contexts, avoiding past mistakes, preserving what works well, and appropriately adapting that which needs change. Aware of the need to deliberately collect multiple perspectives and voices in the history of health professions education—and at times dismayed by the absence and loss of documents—Cynthia is engaged in efforts to preserve relevant archival materials. She is also committed to helping to grow the community of scholars interested in studying the history of the field.

Theoretically, Cynthia engages with the work of Michel Foucault, as well as post-colonialism, anticolonialism, and decoloniality. Some of her specific content areas of interest are globalized medical education, primary care education, accreditation, outcomes-based education, and education for collaboration.

Underpinning Cynthia’s historical research is the knowledge that the creation of Euro-American models of higher education, health professions education, and healthcare institutions globally were intrinsically intertwined with European colonization of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. She understands that colonization has shaped and continues to perpetuate inequities in health professions education and research practices locally, nationally, and globally. Cynthia’s involvement in the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC) is one key partnership within which she collaboratively interrogates these processes. As a high income country researcher and white settler Canadian, she strives to listen, learn, and collaborate with humility, taking care that her work not inadvertently reproduce colonial academic practices.

Cynthia has provided education consultations and worked with educators, scholars, and learners in many countries, as well as with the World Health Organization. She has held many education leadership positions, and is involved in teaching, curricular design, program evaluation, and education administration locally, nationally, and internationally. 

Cynthia is a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine; Director and Scientist at the Wilson Centre, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and University Health Network; and an academic family doctor based clinically at Women’s College Hospital. She holds the BMO Financial Group Chair in Health Professions Education Research at University Health Network..