Massey Talks: Health, Science, and the Democratic Trust with Timothy Snyder, Mamatha Bhat and Dominik Nowak

Organized by Junior Fellows Catherine Stratton and Ferdinand Reke Avikpe, this talk will bring together leaders to discuss the evolving relationship between science, health, democratic institutions, and public trust within and beyond Canada. Framed by the understanding of healthcare as a fundamental right and a defining feature of a functioning democracy, the conversation will examine how health systems shape civic engagement, equity, and social solidarity.

Speakers will reflect on the ways in which access to care, health system structure, technological innovation, and policy can strengthen or erode trust in these institutions. Situated within a charged global political moment, the talk will consider Canada’s role in positioning health and science as democratic imperatives, interrogating where the country is leading, where it is lagging, and what is at stake for democratic futures.

Speaker Bios:

Dr. Timothy Snyder holds the inaugural Chair in Modern European History, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is also a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the head of the academic advisory council of Ukrainian History Global Initiative. He has authored numerous best-selling books on tyranny, freedom and democracy, including On Freedom, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, and Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary. 

A scholar of the history of Central Europe, Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust, Snyder speaks five and reads ten European languages. He is the author or editor of twenty books published in forty languages. Snyder writes for the press on Ukraine, the U.S, authoritarianism, digital politics, health, and education. He has also appeared in documentaries, on television, and as an expert witness before several parliaments. He has received state orders and decorations as well as honorary doctorates. 

Dr. Mamatha Bhat is a Hepatologist and Clinician-Scientist at UHN’s Ajmera Transplant Centre, and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Bhat completed her medical school and residency training at McGill University. She then completed a Transplant Hepatology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Fellowship for Health Professionals, through which she completed a PhD.

The goal of Dr. Bhat’s research program is to improve long-term outcomes of liver transplantation through a precision medicine approach. Her program uses tools of Artificial Intelligence with bioinformatics to personalize the care of liver transplant recipients based on an improved biological understanding of the liver and disease after transplant. Her interdisciplinary program has been supported by the CIHR, Canadian Donation and Transplant Research Program (CDTRP), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Canadian Liver Foundation (CLF), among others. Dr. Bhat is Director of the Clinician-Scientist Training Program in the Dept of Medicine; Partnerships & Engagement Lead for the Temerty Centre for AI Research & Education in Medicine (T-CAIREM) at U of T; Chair of the International Liver Transplant Society Basic and Translational Science Research committee; on the Executive committee of the CDTRP, and an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Transplantation. 

Dr. Dominik Nowak is a family doctor and health leader. In addition to caring for patients and serving as Department Head in Family and Community Medicine at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Dr. Nowak’s mission is to build teamwork across the health system. He is a trusted advisor to leading provincial, national, and international organizations toward a health system that is more kind, caring, and careful. As President at the Ontario Medical Association, the voice of 43,000 doctors across Ontario, he advanced substantive health systems change.

Dr. Nowak trained at McMaster University, where he specialized in family medicine and served as chief resident. He went on to the University of Toronto to finish a Master of Health Administration at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation as well as the ICD-Rotman Directors Education Program at the Rotman School of Management. Dr. Nowak is a faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is a recipient of the College of Family Physicians of Canada Award of Excellence for his leadership in Canadian healthcare.