Deborah Cook receives the 2022 Canadian Gairdner Wightman Award

The CCCTG congratulates Dr. Deborah Cook on receiving the 2022 Canadian Gairdner Wightman Award.

The Gairdner Foundation was established in 1957 with the main goal of recognizing and rewarding international excellence in fundamental research that impacts human health. Annually, seven awards are given. There have been 402 Gairdner awards bestowed on laureates from over 40 countries and of those awardees - 96 former Gairdner awardees have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes. The Gairdner Foundation also engages in outreach programs across Canada and acts as a convener with the public, policymakers, and other stakeholders on the impact of science on our everyday lives.

Deborah was a founding member and chair of the CCCTG. She has mentored generations of clinical scientists in Canada and around the world; and notably, has always taken the best and broadest approach to mentorship – across scientific disciplines, across our inter-professional spectrum, the most junior to senior of colleagues – and has championed improved equity and diversity in science.

Deborah is renowned for her systematic, rigorous approach to clinical research, starting with a clinical question that is relevant to patients, families, and clinicians, and developing a foundational knowledge base that supports each next step of the research pathway. This approach has been the model of successful research across the history of the CCCTG and emulated in Trials Groups around the world.

Deborah’s work has generated well over 1000 scholarly publications and covered major research programs in preventing common complications of critical illness such as gastrointestinal stress ulceration, thromboembolic disease, and pneumonia. Deborah has also helped the profession of critical care embrace learning and improving compassionate end-of-life care for our patients and their families. The “Three Wishes” program perhaps personifies her wonderful career so far – a combination of compassion, scholarship, mentorship … with patients and families at the center.

The 2022 Gairdner Wightman Award follows a long list of honours, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the American Thoracic Society, election as a fellow to the Royal Society of Canada, a Distinguished Lecturer Award from CIHR and the Canadian Critical Care Society, a CIHR Gold Leaf Prize for Impact, and the first Canada Research Chair in Critical Care, among so many others. She has previously been named as a Member, and then Officer, of the Order of Canada.

The CCCTG community is proud of and indebted to Deborah's example, mentorship and friendship.