Mr. Frank Gavin
Chair, Board of Directors
Frank Gavin has been involved in health care and health research, mainly as a volunteer, for over 25 years. In 1995 he joined the Family Advisory Committee to The Hospital for Sick Children, chairing it from 1997 to 2001.
In 2002 Frank founded and then for six years chaired the Canadian Family Advisory Network (CFAN), which linked family councils at paediatric centres across Canada. From 2011 to 2017 he was a public member of The Canadian Drug Expert Committee at The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). He directed the Citizen Engagement Program for CHILD-BRIGHT, the national CIHR research network focused on children with brain-based developmental disabilities, from 2016 to 2021 and was an OSSU board member from 2014 to 2020. He now serves on the inaugural Patient Advisory Committee of The Society for Medical Decision-Making and is the chair of the Public Advisory Council for the Health Data Research Network (Canada).
In 2017 he received the Best Patient Reviewer Award from the BMJ and has published articles in the BMJ, Healthy Debate, and Paediatrics and Child Health. For nearly 30 years Frank taught English at Centennial College in Toronto.