2020 – Trailblazer Award Winner: Dr. Cara Tannenbaum

Dr. Tannenbaum is the Scientific Director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She is also Departmental Science Advisor to Health Canada, and Professor and Endowed Chair in the Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy at the Université de Montréal.

As the Scientific Director of CIHR’s Institute of Gender and Health, she has  leveraged a decade of scientific experience and expertise to provide domestic and international policy leadership on the integration of Sex- and Gender-based Analysis in Action or SGBA considerations into research. She presented this work to the G7 Research Summit in Canada in 2018, and helped shape the incorporation of sex and gender into the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research and innovation framework programme, consults on science policy related to sex and gender for the UK Wellcome Trust, and drives forward new sex and gender policy requirements for other Canadian, provincial and international health research funding agencies and charities. 

Appointed as the Departmental Science Advisor to Health Canada in 2019, Dr. Tannenbaum advises government, is piloting a new Framework for Science and Research Excellence, and Chairs Health Canada’s first Science and Research Integration Network. In the face of the pandemic, Dr. Tannenbaum co-founded CanCOVID with the Office of the Chief Science Advisor and Canadian universities–  a novel crowdsourcing platform bringing together science and policy communities to collaborate, communicate, and coordinate research for COVID-19. CanCOVID went from an idea to a launch in less than two weeks and with broad engagement from universities, industry, and government departments.  

The platform has 3000+ members and is contributing to briefing notes to provincial and federal departments, “state of the science” reports for government officials, science networking, and research proposals.

Dr. Tannenbaum embodies the spirit and impact of a true trailblazer in Science Policy. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, recipient of the Exceptional Contribution to Science Policy Award: Trailblazer.