Dr. Nav Persaud has been named the new Director of St. Michael’s Hospital’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, effective July 1. A highly respected scientist, family physician and champion for justice, Dr. Persaud has dedicated his career to ensuring that everyone in Canada can afford the food and medicines that they need.

“Dr. Persaud is a brilliant, creative and principled researcher who has made extraordinary contributions to the field in Canada and internationally,” said Dr. Ori Rotstein, Vice President of Research and Innovation, St. Michael’s Hospital. “I have great confidence in his leadership and look forward to seeing MAP continue to thrive under his direction.”

Under Dr. Persaud’s leadership, MAP will continue to expand its national, solutions-focused research programs to address some of Canada’s toughest public health challenges including homelessness, inequitable access to healthcare and the prevention of opioid-related harms. MAP is Canada’s largest research centre focused on health equity and the social determinants of health.

“I am deeply grateful and honoured to have this opportunity to support MAP staff and scientists as Director,” said Dr. Persaud. “Together we can build on MAP’s extraordinary legacy while striving for even greater national and global impact. We’ll work responsibly with our partners to upend the status quo by challenging systems and structures that deny people the basics needed to be healthy. Where stigma and discrimination imperil, MAP champions compassionate care and upholds the fundamental right to health for all.”

As Canada Research Chair in Health Justice, Dr. Persaud led the first-ever trial providing people with free access to essential medicines – quantifying the links between medication cost and health outcomes, and bringing to light the unfair choices that millions of Canadians are forced to make about their health. Dr. Persaud’s research directly advanced the pharmacare debate in Canada and ultimately shaped the legislation that introduced a first phase of national pharmacare in 2024. In 2025, Nav was named Chair of the Government of Canada’s National Pharmacare Committee of Experts to make recommendations on how to launch and pay for a fully single-payer pharmacare program across the country.

Dr. Persaud has been a scientist with MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions for more than a decade. He is also a staff physician in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital and a professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Family and Community Medicine.

Thank you Dr. Stephen Hwang

St. Michael’s Hospital and MAP wish to recognize the enormous contributions of Dr. Stephen Hwang. A world-renowned scientist and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Homelessness, Housing and Health, Dr. Hwang became MAP Director in 2015 and has now served the maximum of two five-year terms.

Under his leadership, MAP has more than doubled in size and quintupled in multi-year funding. Despite pandemic-era research shutdowns and a major, unexpected change to the centre’s funding model, the centre has transformed from a largely Ontario-focused academic hub to a global leader in developing, implementing and scaling evidence-driven health equity solutions, with impacts that span from local to national and beyond.

Dr. Hwang’s homelessness, housing and health research program will continue to be based at MAP with a great deal of exciting work ahead, including the implementation of the Slaight Family Housing Lab, recently launched by MAP and St. Michael’s Hospital in partnership with United Way Greater Toronto. The initiative, made possible by a transformative $25 million gift from Gary Slaight and The Slaight Family Foundation, will focus on developing a new, scalable, evidence-based system to move 300 people from streets and encampments into supportive housing.

Read a Q&A with Stephen as he reflects on his eventful and impactful decade as MAP Director.

Get to know Dr. Nav Persaud

Watch: Dr. Nav Persaud testifies at the US Senate on the value of making essential medicines free for everyone (2021)

Listen: Evictions and Access to Justice with Douglas Kwan & Nav Persaud (2022)

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