Professor Roger Strasser was professor of rural health and head of Monash University’s School of Rural Health in Australia before becoming founding dean and CEO of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) from 2002 to 2019. This was the first Canadian medical school established with an explicit social accountability mandate to improve the health of the people and communities of the region it serves. It has become a template for other medical schools across the world.
He then moved to the University of Waikato in New Zealand as professor of rural health before his current appointment as interim Dean of a new medical school at Simon Fraser University, in Canada, where his wife Sarah is interim sub dean.
Recognised as one of the world’s leaders in developing rural, socially accountable medical education, he played a major role in the World Organization of Family Doctors as chair of its working party on rural practice and, in recognition of his remarkable achievements he was named a member of the Order of Australia in 2011.
