Additional information
by Chandrakant P. Shah (Author)
The ninth of fifteen children in a small town in Maharashtra, India, Chandrakant Shah managed to attend medical school through diligent study, sometimes under an oil lamp. He arrived in Canada in 1965, where he joined the School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. In Canada he was immediately struck by the inequities in health and social services for the underserved and the Indigenous populations. Throughout his professorship, he worked tirelessly to draw attention to the plight of these populations and to existing inequalities in Canada's institutions. He also made important contributions to the teaching of public health in Canada and wrote the first comprehensive textbook on the subject that is now in its sixth edition.
Author Biography
Chandrakant P Shah, Professor Emeritus at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, is a retired physician, public-health practitioner, and advocate for improving the health and well-being of marginalized groups in Canada. He was a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences, the University of Toronto from 1972-2001. After he retired from the University, he worked at the Anishnawbe Health Centre Toronto from 2001-2016, where he provided primary health care to Indigenous people in Toronto; he also conducted research on urban Indigenous health issues. His research and advocacy work on employment equity had a profound impact on Canadian universities' hiring policies.
He initiated many changes in Canadian society, including amendments to the citizenship examination to include substantial content on Indigenous history. For many years he was actively involved with the development of undergraduate and postgraduate medical education in public health. His important work in developing teaching objectives in medical schools has been vital to their curricula. His textbook, Shah's Public Health and Preventive Health Care in Canada, was the first of its kind and is a unique resource widely used in universities.
The University of Toronto has established in his honour the CP Shah Alumni Award of Excellence in Public Health, the Queen Elizabeth II/CP Shah Graduate Scholarships in Science, and the C P Shah Award to a resident in Public Health and Preventive Medicine for the best research in fieldwork.
