Congratulations to Dr. Robert Armstrong, Professor Emeritus of Paediatrics (2011)!
Dr. Armstrong was awarded the 2024 President’s Award for Distinguished Service from UBC’s Emeritus College.
The UBC Emeritus College presents one or more President’s Award for Distinguished Service annually to UBC Emeriti who have, since attaining UBC Emeritus status, displayed exceptional leadership in volunteer community services.
Professor Emeritus Robert Armstrong was selected for his lasting contributions not only to UBC, but also to Aga Khan University. Of particular note was his dedication to improving health care and research, and higher education broadly in East Africa.
“Perhaps his most notable achievements were in the area of postgraduate medical education, for which he was recently recognized by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada with the M. Andrew Padmos International Collaboration Award. Many of these new postgraduate programs were in areas of specialization that were rare or non-existent in the region – including family medicine.”
“[Dr. Armstrong]’s outstanding achievements in Kenya far surpassed his prior accomplishments or what could be achieved in Canada where academia and clinical health care are not well integrated. The August 10th, 2020 AKJ News published an article: “AKU honours Dean Robert Armstrong”. In this article AKU Provost Carl Amrhein is quoted as saying: “Bob has brought on board a number of new programmes… These are investments that will define the Medical College for many years to come, and they are an example of Bob’s commitment to interdisciplinarity, to integrated health care.”
“After serving 10 years as Dean Bob retired and returned to Vancouver, where he began the job of writing the second volume of history of the department of paediatrics together with an oral history. This is an enormous job, and he is engaged many members of the department of pediatrics to work together on the project. It will be a model for other departments to record their history.”
Source: https://emerituscollege.ubc.ca/awards-and-support/award-recipients