Recognized by OCA for advancing the profession
A long-held tradition by our respective provincial chiropractic associations is to annually pay tribute to an individual member for exemplary service to the profession.
For more than 50 years, the Ontario Chiropractic Association (OCA) has presented the Chiropractor of the Year Award, the most prestigious and highest individual honour recognizing the significant contribution and personal sacrifice of an association member for the advancement of the profession.
Dr. Allan Gotlib, the 2006 recipient, not only exemplifies that criteria in Ontario, but his dedication has advanced this profession on a national scale.
Although we have known him best for the past 22 years as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association (JCCA), his other little-known contributions exceed even his editorial expertise.
After receiving his Honours BSc undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto in 1972, he enrolled at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC), and he graduated with the class of 1976. He then practised in Toronto until 1997 when he turned his attention to research with the Canadian Chiropractic Association (CCA) as the director of research programs.
Dr. Gotlib is past president of the College of Chiropractors of Ontario (CCO) and he has been involved with that regulatory body for the past 18 years. He has an extensive interest in administrative health law with respect to self-governance and in particular within the disciplinary arena. He was a professor at CMCC for 25 years during which he participated in the training of more than half of Canada’s chiropractors.
POSITIVE COLLABORATIONS
As the CCA’s director of research programs, he has facilitated many positive collaborative multidisciplinary projects and partnerships with federal agencies and universities across Canada in order to build our research capacity and credibility.
He established a partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to support our chiropractic researchers with fellowship, doctoral, New Investigator awards and chiropractic research chairs through operating grants that total millions of dollars. Dr. Gotlib was instrumental in establishing Canada’s first university-based Chiropractic Research Chair at the University of Calgary. This resulted from a historic partnership between the CCA and the CIHR, and an investment of $315,000.
Additionally, he played a key role in the establishment of Canada’s second university-based Chiropractic Research Chair at the University of Toronto, with an investment of over $300,000 shared by the CIHR and the OCA. He also facilitated our profession’s first Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta. This was a $2-million project.
Dr. Gotlib currently is assistant secretary to the Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation (CCRF) and was an appointee to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research President’s Voluntary Sector Committee from 2003 to 2006. Working through the CCRF, he helped bring about another first, the Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation Professorship in Spine Biomechanics and Neurophysiology at the University of British Columbia. This represents a five-year commitment negotiated directly with the university, entailing an initial investment of more than $500,000.
He has written 15 papers pertaining to clinical practice and regulatory health law that have appeared in print in peer-reviewed scholarly scientific literature. His most recent article, “Pediatrics and Child Health,” was published in the journal of the Canadian Pediatric Society. This was the first time that a chiropractor had written for the journal. Dr. Gotlib is the only chiropractor to be a member of the Canadian Pediatric Society. He is past chair of the Chiropractic Research Journal Editors Council (CRJEC), an international consortium that sets standards for scholarly publications. In addition, he is a member of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA).
In addition to the CCA Research Committee and the CCRF, Dr. Gotlib has been on several committees and task forces during his 30-year career, and he has made numerous presentations internationally. Presently, he is a member of the executive committee for the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre, and a lay member with the Law Society of Upper Canada, the regulatory body that governs lawyers in Ontario, where he is a bencher, and a past member of the Deputy Judges Council of Ontario.
In the face of these impressive accomplishments, he has not compromised what is of greatest value to him, his family
Dr. Gotlib is respected by his peers for the quiet and diligent manner in which he advances chiropractic research, enhancing our reputation in North America and beyond. It is with no surprise to anyone that he will now add to his list of achievements the OCA’s 2006 Chiropractor of the Year Award.
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