This past weekend marked Canada's 150th anniversary and it is hard to believe the festivities are already behind us. Since the beginning of this year, people all across Canada have come together to celebrate and commemorate our great country. I hope you were able to join in the celebrations with your family and friends and enjoyed a relaxing weekend.
Grand opening of the Toronto Western Family Health Team's Garrison Creek Site
Last week, the Toronto Western Family Health Team celebrated the opening of its Garrison Creek clinic. Officially open since March 6th, 2017, the clinic is located in the St. Clair and Oakwood neighbourhood and supports the community's primary care needs.
Garrison Creek hosts an interdisciplinary team offering a wide range of services and has proven to be a much-needed and appreciated addition to the neighbourhood — it has already overseen 3,200 patient visits, rostered more than 1,100 patients and is accepting more.
Congratulations to the Garrison Creek team on the clinic's success — you are truly transforming lives and communities with your services.
Princess Margaret Senior Scientist releases ground-breaking research
As Canada's largest research hospital, UHN fosters the development of many important discoveries in patient care. I'm proud to share an important, and exciting, discovery made by Dr. John Dick, Senior Scientist at Princess Margaret, who continues to demonstrate the progress of his work in understanding cancer stem cells with a view to developing treatments that utilize this knowledge.
Leukemia researchers led by Dr. Dick discovered that therapy-resistant stem cells, which are present at diagnosis, are responsible for relapse in acute myeloid leukemia patients. The study has been published in Nature and will help pioneer new, targeted treatments. You can read more about the study here.
Important notice about email security
Last week Dr. David Jaffray, UHN's Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation, sent out a notice about the importance of never sharing passwords. I want to reinforce that message as the security of all our systems is critical to our ability to provide patient care within a secure environment. In light of recent global cyber-attacks, it is now more important than ever to remain vigilant about cyber security. The best way to do this is to never share passwords, never click on suspicious links and always report something that doesn't feel right — it helps keep UHN's systems secure.
Peter
