Public Health Physician, Nova Scotia

Welcoming Communities – Space and place for peace and wellbeing!

Keynote address, ASI 2019 Opening Ceremony
August 19, 2019, 6:30 pm

Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed is a Royal College certified specialist in Public Health and Preventive Medicine (PHPM), having completed her post graduate medical education in this field at McMaster University in 2005. She is also certified in Family Medicine. She is a passionate advocate for the role public health can play in advancing health equity.

Dr. Watson-Creed is a PEI native and received chemistry degrees from UPEI and University of Guelph before attending Dalhousie University for her MD in 1995. Although her current major role is as Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Nova Scotia, she holds and has held several other key population health roles during her career. She is currently the Assistant Dean of Serving and Engaging Society for Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Medicine, a new portfolio created in 2018, through which she hopes to create new opportunities for the medical school to catalyze much-needed change in the health care system and partner with communities to improve outcomes in health. She is also Chair of the Board of Engage Nova Scotia, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving Nova Scotia’s place in the world. She sits as chair or member of several population health councils and boards nationally, including the examination Board for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and is co-chair of the Advisory Council to the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. She is a member of the CIHI Advisory Council on Population Health and advocates for high quality and well organized public health services in Canada.

Dr. Watson-Creed is a dedicated leader and in 2013, she received the Nova Scotia Public Health Champion Award. She was a member of the One Nova Scotia Coalition, which was the round table charged with responding to the state-of-the-Nova-Scotia-economy report laid out by the One Nova Scotia Commission (The Ivany Report), and received the William Grigor award for achievement in medicine from Doctors Nova Scotia in 2017. In 2018 she was awarded the President’s award from Public Health Physicians of Canada for her advocacy regarding population health systems and services in Canada. She is a mom, wife and fitness instructor, and unwinds through building, sewing, gardening, baking and dance in her spare time.