A new academy takes shape in the east

Physicians, educators and health system leaders gathered at the Guild Inn Estate in Scarborough on June 9 for the third annual Scarborough Academy of Medicine (SAM) Medical Education Summit — an event that offered both a look back at early progress and a glimpse of what’s ahead for the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s newest community-embedded academy.

“This is much more than an academic initiative,” said Patricia Houston, vice dean, medical education at Temerty Medicine, in her opening remarks. “It’s about a vision for equity, opportunity and transformation in one of the most dynamic and diverse communities in Canada.”

Partners committed to Scarborough’s future

The summit brought together institutional leaders and frontline clinicians from Scarborough Health Network (SHN), Michael Garron Hospital (MGH) and Temerty Medicine for a day of learning and dialogue. For the hospital partners anchoring the academy, it was an opportunity to articulate their own stakes in the work.

David Graham, president and CEO of SHN, pointed to the academy’s potential to address a long-standing challenge: training health professionals in Scarborough.

“Our vision is simple: we want to train clinicians here alongside the patients and communities they will serve, and create the conditions that inspire them to stay, practise, teach and lead here throughout their careers,” Graham said. “Scarborough is not only a community in need of more health-care professionals — it’s one of the most powerful learning environments in the country.”

The network currently supports more than 2,200 learners across its three hospital sites and has seen emergency department visits grow 12 per cent year-over-year for three consecutive years — a caseload that, according to Graham, offers learners unmatched exposure to the complexity, acuity and diversity of urban community care.

Melanie Kohn, president and CEO of MGH, emphasized her hospital’s commitment to the academic mandate underpinning the partnership. “We believe that learning and discovery are cornerstones of advancing health care, and they’re what drive us to innovate, adapt and challenge the status quo,” she said. MGH will host SAM clinical rotations and has recently established its first chair in education in collaboration with U of T — a milestone Kohn described as emblematic of the hospital’s long-term investment in the partnership.

Medical education at MGH dates to 1946 and at SHN to 1959. Together with the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), the two hospital networks form the clinical and academic foundation on which SAM is being built.

What’s ahead for SAM and SAMIH

The summit offered a preview of what lies ahead for the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health (SAMIH). This summer, the Myron and Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex will open on the UTSC campus, serving as the home base for SAMIH learners. The building will welcome the first Scarborough cohort of Temerty Medicine's Physician Assistant (PA) Program and physical therapy (PT) learners, alongside nurse practitioners from U of T’s Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and UTSC’s undergraduate health sciences program. Learners from U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy will engage in valuable experiential learning opportunities as Discovery Pharmacy launches its first public-facing satellite location within the complex. UTSC psychology students will gain clinical experience at an on-site clinic. The building will also house the Scarborough Centre for Brain Health, home to the first clinical and research MRI facility in the eastern GTA.

The model is explicitly interprofessional: students from different disciplines will train and work alongside one another at UTSC and across the Scarborough hospital system, mirroring the team-based care they will deliver as practitioners.

Molly Zirkle, director of medical education expansion at SAMIH, is leading the work to bring those programs together.

The MD Program at SAM will soon follow. Caroline Chan, an emergency medicine physician at SHN, was named SAM’s inaugural academy director in 2025. Chan confirmed that SAM’s first cohort of 40 medical students will enter in 2027, with clerkship rotations at SHN and MGH beginning in 2029.

“This fall marks an important step forward as SAMIH opens on the U of T Scarborough campus,” Chan said. “The MD SAM class will launch in 2027 — and from that point forward, generations of physicians will begin their training here.”

Houston framed the coming launch of SAM in terms of what the new academy and its influx of learners promises for the region. “As the next generation of health care professionals start their education journey here, we are all moving towards a shared goal of bringing a much-needed increase in community-based, patient-centred care to Scarborough,” she said.

Chan grounded those ambitions in the realities of the communities SAM will serve. Scarborough and east Toronto are home to more than 730,000 residents, but have the second-lowest number of family physicians per capita in the province, the third-lowest number of specialists and some of the highest rates of chronic disease in the city.

“Our goal is not simply to train future physicians in Scarborough and east Toronto,” she said. “It is to prepare physicians who understand it, are committed to it and will improve it.”

Health equity and the power of place

The event also featured keynote addresses from two East Toronto-based clinicians. Mojola Omole, a breast surgical oncologist and general surgeon at SHN, and Adil Shamji, Don Valley East MPP, emergency medicine physician at MGH and lecturer at Temerty Medicine, explored what health equity looks like in practice and how clinician advocacy can serve as the mechanism to achieve it.

Adaptive expertise and the future of health professions education

With the influx of MD learners comes greater demand for clinicians to deliver educational programming. A panel discussion on adaptive expertise, introduced by Maria Mylopoulos, an education scientist and director of training programs at The Wilson Centre and professor of paediatrics at Temerty Medicine, and moderated by SAM faculty development lead Grant Chen, drew on frontline experience from clinician-educators at SHN and MGH to explore how educators can prepare learners to navigate complexity and uncertainty in busy clinical environments.

The evening wrapped up with round-table discussions on the future of health-professions education, covering intergenerational differences in teaching and learning, the evolving role of artificial intelligence and the promise of interprofessional teams.

A proven model, carried eastward

SAM follows a well-established model: this year marks the 15th anniversary of the Mississauga Academy of Medicine (MAM), Temerty Medicine’s community-based academy on the U of T Mississauga campus, partnered with Trillium Health Partners. MAM’s focus on training physicians embedded in the communities they serve has directly informed SAM’s design and ambitions.

As SAM carries that approach to the eastern GTA — backed by SHN, MGH, UTSC and Temerty Medicine — the message from the summit was clear: Scarborough has long had the patients, the complexity and the community to be one of Canada’s great places to train a physician. Now, it will have the academy to match.