New CMA President Champions Values Central to MRBC’s Mission
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
After being elected as president-elect in 2024, Dr. Boluwaji Ogunyemi assumed his role as President of the Canadian Medical Association on May 29, 2026. Despite being only 39 years old—one of the youngest individuals ever to lead the CMA—he brings a distinguished record of clinical practice, leadership, and advocacy.
His family immigrated from Nigeria and settled in Newfoundland. After completing an honours double major in Medical Sciences and Sociology at Western University, he returned to Newfoundland to attend medical school, where he served as president of the Medical School Society. He then completed a dermatology residency at the University of British Columbia, where he was named Chief Resident, before once again returning to Newfoundland to establish his practice.
Every few months, Dr. Ogunyemi makes the 2,000-kilometre journey from St. John’s to Wabush in western Labrador to provide dermatology clinics for the approximately 10,000 residents of the region. His outreach clinic remains the only source of dermatologic care available to the people living in this remote area.
Dr. Ogunyemi’s undergraduate studies in sociology helped shape much of his subsequent work. He served as the inaugural Assistant Dean of Social Accountability at Memorial University and completed a Fellowship in Health Systems Improvement through the Alberta School of Public Health. He has served on the board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and was recognized with the CMA Award for Young Leaders. His leadership and advocacy in health equity, Indigenous health, community engagement, and global health led to his being named a Changemaker by The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine.
Among Dr. Ogunyemi’s notable observations are: “Understanding the science is crucial in medicine, but it’s not enough. We also need to understand context—social, historical and systemic—to apply our knowledge in ways that best serve patients,” and “Technology alone isn’t a magic bullet for closing gaps, particularly for underserved communities. Equity has to be built into how we innovate.”
Dr. Ogunyemi’s focus on health equity, social accountability, service to underserved communities, community partnership, and purposeful innovation resonates strongly with the values that underpin Med Response BC. Like Dr. Ogunyemi, MRBC believes that geography should not determine health outcomes and that innovation must be intentionally designed to reduce inequities rather than inadvertently reinforce them.
These principles are reflected in MRBC’s work to develop physician-led interprofessional prehospital and retrieval medicine services focused on rural, remote, and Indigenous communities across British Columbia. By bringing tertiary-level critical care closer to patients and supporting local healthcare teams, MRBC seeks to improve access to timely, high-quality care for communities that have historically faced significant barriers due to distance, geography, and limited healthcare resources.
They are also reflected in how MRBC is being built. Rather than developing a system solely from an urban perspective, MRBC has engaged rural physicians, Indigenous leaders, patients, families, transport clinicians, health system partners, and international experts in prehospital and retrieval medicine throughout its development. This commitment to community-informed innovation recognizes that sustainable solutions are most effective when they are shaped by the people and communities they are intended to serve.
MRBC is also working to establish a learning health system in which clinical outcomes, patient experiences, operational data, and community feedback continuously inform service improvement. This approach reflects a commitment not only to delivering care, but to continually learning how to deliver it better.
As Dr. Ogunyemi has observed, “Equity has to be built into how we innovate.” For MRBC, that principle is not simply an aspiration—it is a foundational commitment that guides its strategy, partnerships, and vision for the future.
