Canada's lead
for chronic disease control
By David Kawai

Dr. Gregory Taylor is the director for the Public Health Agency of Canada's Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control (CCDPC).

OTTAWA — Dr. Gregory Taylor isn’t your typical scientist.

He doesn’t work in a lab, he has no ambition to publish on any scientific research at the moment, and he traded his lab coat and latex gloves for a suit-jacket and tie a long time ago.

It was ten years ago, to be exact, in 1995, when he left his job as a family practitioner in Guelph, Ontario to pursue a career in public health with Health Canada.

Today, after much internal reorganization at Health Canada, the 50-year-old Taylor has climbed the government’s hierarchical ladder to become the director general of the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control directorate of the newly created Public Health Agency of Canada.

But Taylor, who interacts with politicians just as much as he does with his scientific colleagues, didn’t get into medicine because of adolescent dreams of becoming a civil servant.

“I think I made the decision in grade eight or nine,” he said. “I wanted to contribute to society, I wanted to help people. It sounds simplistic and idealistic, and it is.”

Taylor explained that he knew he wanted to deal with a lot of different areas of medicine, which is why he became a family physician.

“But after practicing in family practice, I found it to be unsustainable, because you have to handle too many people very quickly,” he said. It was around then that he discovered public health.

“There’s a saying,” Taylor said. “When you’re in primary care, you can make a difference in the lives of 2,000 to 3,000 people, but in public health, you can make a difference in a country, potentially millions of people.”

Perhaps for someone interested in many areas of medicine, there could be no better job than Taylor’s, where politics, policy, science and research must be weighed with equal importance.

Chronic disease covers a huge variety of illness, including cancer, diabetes and mental health.

Taylor says his biggest role as the director for the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, or CCDPC as he calls it, is to provide leadership.

“Leadership from the perspective that I’m accountable and manage the resources,” he explained.

For example, he will have a large say in how $300 million, announced in October by Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, will be distributed over 10 years as part of the Public Health Agency’s Integrated Approach to Preventing Chronic Disease.

“There’s leadership, certainly in managing money, but also the leadership we do with our external partners,” he said. “We don’t tell people what to do, we build bridges to bring people and organizations together to align activities.”

Taylor used the creation of the Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada to illustrate his point.

He explained that before the alliance, he dealt with the Canadian Cancer Society or the Heart and Stroke Foundation, for example, as individual organizations.

“But we wanted it to be more together, so I was involved with the first meeting where we brought up the concept of the alliance,” he said. “I was personally involved with finding resources and influencing direction and membership.”

Today, the Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada, known as the CDPAC, is made up of 12 health organizations, including the Public Health Agency of Canada, and works together in developing programs for chronic disease prevention.

Although Taylor says he is proud of the creation of the CDPAC, he remains modest.

“I did create it, arguably, even though the people at the Cancer Society thought it was their idea,” he chuckled. “But, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter who takes the blame or rewards. I just know that I played a big part and it’s successful.”

Taylor admits that there are both good and frustrating aspects about working for the government.

“Sometimes I love it and adore it, and sometimes I hate it,” he said. “I love it because public health in Canada is in a renaissance era. I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to build public health policy.

“But sometimes I have to be careful in what I say,” he said, alluding to the fact that government scientists are asked not to comment publicly about science outside of their expertise. “As a public servant, that just goes with the job.”