Aaron Orkin

Current academic appointment/faculty rank: Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, with cross appointment to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. 

Affiliations:  

• Emergency Physician, Department of Emergency Medicine, St. Joseph's Health Centre, Unity Health Toronto 

• Medical Director, Emergency First Response Team Program, Ornge 

• Co-Chair, National Medical Advisory Committee, Canadian Red Cross 

Research summary:  

Dr. Aaron Orkin is a clinician scientist and emergency physician whose research focuses on clinical public health, community-based emergency care, task shifting, and health equity. For more than 15 years, he has developed and evaluated community-based emergency care programs that prepare local responders and community members to provide essential care in rural, remote, and underserved settings. 

A central theme of his research is clinical population medicine, an approach that connects the care of individual patients with population-level prevention, equity, community resilience, and health-system design. His work examines how first responders, peers, lay providers, and other non-traditional members of the health workforce can safely expand access to emergency care, first aid, overdose response, harm reduction, vaccination, and other clinical and public health interventions. 

Dr. Orkin’s research also addresses the theoretical foundations of task shifting, lay and community health work, and the relationship between clinical medicine and public health. He has led CIHR-funded studies, systematic reviews, program evaluations, and guideline initiatives with health systems, community organizations, First Nations partners, and national and international collaborators. Across this work, he emphasizes rigorous evaluation, long-term partnership, and working in solidarity with communities to advance health equity and translate evidence into sustainable policy and practice.