OMC Panel
Conference Program: OMC Panel
Empowering Black health: Navigating disparities, celebrating excellence and envisioning futures
Come join three expert panelists at the Ontario Midwifery Conference for an engaging dialogue on the theme Empowering Black health: Navigating disparities, celebrating excellence and envisioning futures.
Hear from Karline Wilson Mitchell, RM, Director of TMU MEP; 'Remi Ejiwunmi, RM, Chair of the MSP Steering Committee, and Dr. Cynthia Maxwell, MFM & Obesity Medicine Specialist, about the current state of perinatal health-care for Black clients and the IBPOC leadership and empowerment driving a vision for better outcomes.
Panel Presenters
Remi Ejiwunmi, RM
Remi Ejiwunmi is a graduate of the first class of the MEP from McMaster University and past president of the AOM. Remi has practiced in the suburbs in the West End of the GTA for the past 28 years in a large suburban/rural practice and been the Head Midwife at Trillium Health Partners for 19 years, a hospital at which they have a supportive interdisciplinary team of care and where they have recently initiated a journey to becoming an Anti-racist organization with a particular focus on Anti-Black racism. Remi sits as a member on the AOM's Quality, Insurance and Risk Management Committee, the HIROC's Board of Directors, PCMCH Governing Council, the BORN Midwifery Advisory Committee and the Black Reproductive Health Working Group. Remi is an experienced leader with a strong demonstrated commitment to equity based care that is high quality, evidence based and reflective of community needs.
Cynthia Maxwell, MD
Dr. Cindy Maxwell is an accomplished physician, researcher and educator who has been recognized as a transformative health system leader. She is Vice President, Medical Affairs & System Transformation and Lead Medical Executive at Women’s College Hospital. She is a Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital and Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Toronto. Her clinical and research interests are focused on disorders of pregnancy with an emphasis on pregnancies affected by obesity, malignancy, and other medical conditions.
Dr. Maxwell co-leads the Black Village Leadership Circle of First Exposure, helped to establish N-ABL, the provincial network to support Black medical learners and is a past-President of the Black Physicians Association of Ontario.
Karline Wilson-Mitchell DrNP, FACNM, RM
Dr. Karline Wilson-Mitchell, who hails from Jamaica, is the first and only Black Canadian midwifery education professor. She is the current director of the Toronto Metropolitan University, Midwifery department. She is passionate about reproductive justice that informs midwifery education, practice and global partnerships. She has been a registered nurse since 1984, and a midwife since 1992. She has worked as midwife in urban and rural settings in the U.S. and Canada, as a consultant for leadership and curriculum development in Jamaica, Tanzania, Zambia, Burundi, and South Sudan. Her new course, Black Birthing & Health Equity, launched in January 2024. It examines African diasporic traditions around family, perinatal care, and challenges learners to develop creative ways of conceiving and recreating healthy birth environments for their family members. Her scholarship problematizes the health disparities experienced by Black Canadians. She launched the SSHRC-funded Colour of Birth Symposium and Living Art Exhibition February 1-2, 2024 at TMU.