A new associate medical officer of health has been named for the region.
The Board of Health announced June 16 the appointment of Dr. Imran Adrian Khan as associate medical officer of health for Public Health Sudbury & Districts. Khan will begin his new role as a public health physician Oct. 24, pending approval by the Ontario Minister of Health.
“Following a long and extensive search … we are very pleased to have attracted such talented physician leadership,” said René Lapierre, Board of Health chair and the city councillor for Ward 6. “We look forward to Dr. Khan’s many contributions in promoting and protecting health in the Sudbury and Manitoulin districts.”
Khan will work under the direction of Dr. Penny Sutcliffe, the region’s medical officer of health, “to achieve the public health mandate and address immediate priorities for public health recovery in support of healthy communities locally,” stated a news release.
Khan holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Waterloo and was recently successful in his Public Health and Preventive Medicine Fellowship exams with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He will be finishing his specialty training with NOSM University in October.
Khan’s hiring ends two years of searching for a new associate medical officer of health. During the pandemic and without an associate, Sutcliffe was worked so much overtime she was paid $200,000 in overtime for 2020 and $260,000 in overtime for 2021, the annual Sunshine List detailed back in March.
“We have been searching to recruit an associate medical officer of health for some time now, and this position has been vacant for the duration of the pandemic,” Lapierre said in March. “Dr. Penny Sutcliffe has been our unfaltering leader throughout this emergency, herself having worked the equivalent of well over two positions for two years.”
Public Health Sudbury also said back in March that its employees worked 61,559 hours of overtime (the workload equivalent of almost 34 full time positions) “under intensely stressful and constantly changing conditions” during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
