Advocacy Education

Central to the GEM Centre’s mission is advancing equitable emergency care for all and for many of our members, this starts with ensuring health advocacy principles are taught successfully and appropriately within curricula in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education.

Research to Date

Advocating for Advocacy: The state of the advocate role in Canadian Family and Emergency Medicine training programs

Project Team: Jennifer Hulme (PI), Kate Hayman, John Ihnat, Andrew Pinto, Megan Landes, Jonathan Sherbino, Sarah Wright, Conor Lavelle, Malika Sharma, Katherine Rouleau, Kate Atkinson, Serena Perera

Project Description: A national survey of Canadian emergency and family medicine residency Program Directors was conducted to investigate best practices and existing challenges in teaching health and justice advocacy to postgraduate trainees.

Project Funding: This project was funded through a grant from the Education Development within the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto

PUBLICATIONS

McDonald M, Lavelle C, Wen M, Sherbino J, Hulme J. The state of health advocacy training in postgraduate medical education: a scoping review. Medical education. 2019 Dec;53(12):1209-20.

PRESENTATIONS

Perera S, Girdler H, McKnight A, McDonald M, Lavelle C, Rouleau K, Wright S, Ihnat J, Hayman K, Landes M, Hulme J. Advocating for advocacy: a qualitative interview study into the state of the health advocate role in Canadian emergency and family medicine post-graduate training programs. International Conference on Emergency Medicine (ICEM). Montreal Quebec, Canada. May 2025. (Poster Presentation)
Lavelle C, Hulme J, McDonald M. The state of advocacy in postgraduate medical education: a literature review. Divisions of Emergency Medicine Research & Academic Day, University of Toronto. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. May 2018.

Educational Theories for Experiential Simulation

Project Team: Edward Xie (PI), Jennifer Hulme, Hasan Sheikh, Thomas Piggott, Humaira Nakhuda, Megan Landes

Project Description: The goal of this project was to understand the educational and theoretical basis of simulation education, with the goal of applying best practices to teaching complex public and social health issues via multidisciplinary simulations.

Funding: This project was supported by an Art of the Possible (AOP) grant from the Office of Educational Scholarship in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Advocacy Writing As Resident Education (AWARE)

Project Team: Blair Bigham (Resident PI), Conor Lavelle, Jennifer Hulme, Kate Hayman

Project Description: AWARE is a novel education method for teaching advocacy to EM trainees. The team hosted op-ed writing sessions for EM residents, with the aim of providing longitudinal and instructional learning opportunities for health advocacy in writing.

Project Funding: This project was funded by a Medical Humanities Education Grant through Postgraduate Medical Education within the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto

PUBLICATIONS

Bigham BL, Lavelle C, Hulme J, Hayman K. The simulated newsroom: A novel educational innovation to teach advocacy skills to resident physicians. AEM Education and Training. 2022 Aug;6(4):e10790.

PRESENTATIONS

Bigham B, Lavelle C, Hulme J, Hayman K. The simulated newsroom: a novel educational intervention to teach advocacy skills to resident physicians. Poster accepted to Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) Conference 2020.

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