Dr. Janusz Kaczorowski
Montreal, QC - 2013

Dr. Janusz Kaczorowski is the 2013 recipient of the Family Medicine Researcher of the Year Award. This award recognizes a family medicine researcher who is a CFPC member and who has made original contributions to research and knowledge building for family medicine in Canada. The contribution may encompass any aspect of family medicine research, from clinical to health services to education.

Dr. Kaczorowski holds a PhD degree in sociology from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. As a graduate student, Dr. Kaczorowski worked as a research assistant at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology at the University of Montreal, Quebec, and started to teach undergraduate-level courses in sociology, statistics, and mass communication at both Concordia and McGill universities in Montreal. It was during this period that he had his first taste of family medicine research.

Dr. Kaczorowski credits meeting and working with Dr. Michael Klein as a pivotal point in his career. He first met Dr. Klein in 1988, when Dr. Klein was a professor of family medicine at McGill University, Director of the Herzl Family Practice Centre at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, and a principal investigator on the first North American randomized controlled trial of episiotomy. Working with Dr. Klein on the episiotomy trial was Dr. Kaczorowski’s introduction to family medicine, medical research, randomized controlled trials, and obstetrics.

Dr. Kaczorowski eventually moved to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he was quickly promoted to assistant professor, then associate professor, and eventually he assumed the Research Director position in the department. He left McMaster University in 2007 to move to Vancouver, where he was Director of Primary Care and Community Research at the Child & Family Research Institute, and was a professor and Research Director in the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia. In 2008 he received the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Senior Scholar Award in Health Services.

Currently, Dr. Kaczorowski is Professor and Research Director at the Department of Family and Emergency Medicine at the University of Montreal and a director of the Health Care Systems and Services at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM). He is a holder of two research chair positions: the Dr. Sadok Besrour Chair in Family Medicine and the GSK-CIHR (GlaxoSmithKline-Canadian Institutes of Health Research) Endowed Chair in Optimal Management of Chronic Disease.