Our nation’s new chief public health officer is eager to get to work making a difference.
Dr. Joss Reimer begins her three-year term as Canada’s new chief public health officer next week
Dr. Joss Reimer begins her three-year term as Canada’s top doc on April 1. The Winkler native feels she’s coming to the job well prepared.
“I applied for this position for the same reason that I went into public health in the first place, for the same reason that I did medicine,” she shared in an interview with the Voice. “I really always wanted to use my career to help make the world a better place, and I want to contribute in any way I can to make my community healthier, whether that’s my immediate friends and family, the city or town that I live in, or now the entire country.”
She comes to the role with a lengthy list of credentials, including stints as president of the Canadian Medical Association, chief medical officer for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, undergraduate director of population health at the University of Manitoba, and as the medical lead and spokesperson for Manitoba’s COVID-19 vaccine taskforce.
Her clinical practice includes several years of training in obstetrics and gynecology before tackling a public health specialty.
“I would never have predicted half of the things that happened in my career, growing up in rural Manitoba,” Reimer reflected. “This is not ever what I pictured for myself, but I also feel like I’ve had the most rewarding career I could have imagined.”
Looking back at her childhood, Reimer noted that medicine wasn’t initially the path she thought she’d take.
Reimer is the daughter of longtime Winkler physician Dr. Murray Reimer (“I don’t think it matters how far I get in my career,” she noted, “I will forever at Boundary Trails Health Centre be ‘Dr. Reimer’s daughter,’ and I think he’s really proud of that.)
“I grew up in the home of a family doctor and saw how hard that job is, saw how much was missed of family events and having to disappear all the time, delivering babies in the middle of the night or going in for surgeries,” Reimer recalled.
It led her to instead pursue a degree in political science.
“I wanted to get into international relations and try to help shape the world that way, but felt frustrated that many people didn’t seem at the time to care about things like policy,” Reimer said. “I wanted to try to find a role in something where I would see the benefits of the work that I was doing firsthand, and I do. I love doing work with patients and getting to directly see the impact on their lives.
“But I also very quickly found that I was still passionate about the policy side of things, because when you see the same problems coming up over and over and over again, you really start to want to try to dive into why this is happening and can we prevent it.
“That’s where I ended up back in public health, back in the policy world trying to help people stay healthy instead of just coming to see us when they’re not healthy and they need help.”
Reimer became the face of the province’s vaccine rollout during the pandemic. Being a public figure during such a divisive time certainly came with more than its fair share of challenges, but it was a role she ultimately found quite satisfying.
“All the stresses with being a public figure aside, the actual work I find incredibly energizing and rewarding to be able to provide resources to people,” she said, noting she thrives on “making sure that people have the information that they need to make informed decisions. I love taking complex topics and trying to make them easily understandable to people.”
To that end, her focus now as chief public health officer is to try to dispel health misinformation and rebuild public trust in the national health agency in the wake of the pandemic.
“There’s so many things that are going on that I care so deeply about,” Reimer shared. “Misinformation and disinformation is a big one for me because I truly believe that all of us are trying to make the best decisions we can for ourselves, for our families, but when you are bombarded by misinformation online, that is very challenging to know what’s true, what’s best for me, what’s best for my family.
“So I want to contribute in any way I can to making sure that Canadians have access to reliable, evidence-based information, whether that’s with the healthcare provider right in front of them, on websites, on social media. I want to be part of providing good information to Canadians.”
Reimer recognizes the irony in the fact she grew up in a region that today is in the site of one of the largest measles outbreaks in Canada and has the lowest measles vaccination rates in Manitoba.
“It’s so heartbreaking to me to see people who become severely ill, and we’ve even unfortunately had a few deaths [nationally] that could have been prevented,” she said, reiterating the importance of ensuring people are making health decisions with accurate information. “So if I can play a role in this new job in helping people make informed decisions, that is going to be very rewarding to me because I come from a community that’s right now being affected by measles specifically.”
Building trust is a big part of that, she observed, as it was while trying to educate people about the importance of vaccination against COVID-19.
“I think I learned a lot during the COVID pandemic about some of those challenges. Particularly when people are going through a hard time, it can be even harder to trust authority because when you’re struggling with things it’s tough to know whose fault it is that you’re struggling,” Reimer said. “During COVID, a lot of people went through some really difficult experiences—whether it was job loss or not having access to friends and family—that were really challenging.”
When it comes to educating people during such challenging times, Reimer notes that it starts at the grassroots level.
“Where I think we see some of the best success is when we work directly with communities and try to work with people who are trusted in that community,” she said, pointing to the work done by longtime local medical professionals to try to reach out to people and answer any questions and concerns they have about vaccinations. “I want to see that approach throughout, whether we’re talking about the frontline providers, making sure that the physicians and nurses, that they have the information and the skills that they need to talk to people in that trusted relationship, but taking that all the way up to the provincial, to the federal level and making sure that our messages are centered around accurate information, but also centered around empathy. That this is difficult, everyone’s trying their best, and making sure we approach it from that standpoint.”
As she prepares to begin her new job, Reimer admits there’s both excitement and a bit of trepidation.
“I feel like I’m as well prepared as one could be for this monumental role,” she said. “I’m obviously going to make mistakes—we all make mistakes. There’s going to be a lot that I need to learn, and so there’s a healthy amount of anxiety that I feel.
“But I feel an equal amount of excitement about being able to contribute to the well-being of Canadians, and knowing that I’m joining a team that is full of experts and really strong, passionate people.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to contribute to the well-being of everybody across the country.”
