Canadian Leadership in Ageing Awards

2024 RTOERO Leadership in Ageing Award Recipients:

The NIA and RTOERO are proud to announce the winners of the 2024 Canadian Leadership in Ageing Awards. 

The prize for an undergraduate student ($1,000) was awarded to Nikita Chopra, a student at Queen’s University. In 2023, Nikita entered the Queen’s University Institute for Health Improvement Case Competition, where she was awarded first place for her ideation and pitch of the Ontario Program of Assisted Alternative Care (OPAAC). Nikita’s entry was in response to the inequities posed by Bill 7: the More Beds Better Care Act. Her OPAAC proposed policy program seeks to provide better suited care options through a four-stage process.

The prize for a graduate student ($1,000) was awarded to Josee Sunday, a Master’s in Healthcare Management student at McMaster University. A Mohawk woman from the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, Josee also works as a Indigenous Transition Facilitator with Providence Care Hospital in Kingston, Ontario. Josee represents Indigenous people and their interests in healthcare within this hospital, and this OHT region, acting as Co-chair of the Indigenous Transition Facilitator Community of Practice (provincially) and Co-chair of the OHT- subgroup Indigenous Palliative Care Support Strategies (regionally). She has re-written pre-existing policies to better support Indigenous access to care and traditional medicines, specifically, implementing a smudging policy within her organization. Her work has helped to reduce barriers of communication between hospitals and Indigenous communities, greatly improving health information sharing between regions.