2013 Winner

The 2013 Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine was awarded to Dr. Sunita Vohra of the University of Alberta at a gala award dinner on September 26, 2013 in Vancouver, BC.

Dr. Vohra is the founding Director of Canada’s first academic pediatric integrative medicine program, CARE (Complementary and Alternative Research and Education), at the University of Alberta as well as the founding Director of the University’s Integrative Health Institute. She has led many studies on the effectiveness of CAM and has been inducted as fellow of Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, one of the highest honours for any member of the Canadian health sciences community. Her recent research projects include an evaluation of the effectiveness of pediatric integrative medicine as an adjunct to usual care and examinations of the effectiveness of ginseng for pediatric upper respiratory tract infection; and Mind Body Stress Reduction for at risk youth.

With her background in pediatrics, clinical epidemiology and clinical pharmacology, Dr. Vohra is a respected leader in both CAM and conventional medicine, often working to help these two communities connect. She founded Canada’s national pediatric CAM network as well as helped found the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Integrative Medicine, which she now chairs. Dr. Vohra initiated the use of N-of-1 studies (a multiple cross over trial performed in a single person) as an innovative and patient-centered solution to the limitations of randomized controlled trials for individualized therapies. At the beginning of her career, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, she recognized the importance of CAM to her patients and their families and the lack of substantive information on the therapies and potential interactions with conventional care. She was recruited to the University of Alberta to implement her vision of the CARE program in 2003, a program which now trains the next generation of researchers, educators, and clinicians about pediatric integrative medicine.