2024 Cumming School of Medicine Alumni of Distinction Awards

Dr. Hanan Bassyouni, MD’98, is an endocrinologist and a clinical associate professor in the department of medicine. She has dedicated her career to service: to students, to patients, to colleagues and to her community. As an award-winning educator across the undergraduate and postgraduate medical curricula, she goes above and beyond for her students by providing extra support and ad hoc tutorial groups. She makes herself available to her students even outside of regular hours for personal or educational support.  

Her unique clinical practice includes outreach service and endocrinology consultations to marginalized, indigenous, and refugee populations. Her patients, many of whom supported her nomination for this award, report that she is a fearless advocate and offers the same extended availability to them as she does to her students.  

In her role as a medical volunteer at summer camps run by Diabetes Canada, her colleagues report that she acts as a mentor to everyone on the medical team and goes out of her way using her personal time to enhance the learning of others.  

Dr. Bassyouni is a deep believer in community volunteering and provides many hours of community service at local organizations including local schools. She credits her parents for instilling in her the importance of serving others, and her husband and children for their support of her efforts. 

Dr. Judith Littleford, MD’87, has been a treasured clinical educator to many generations of anesthesiologists at the University of Manitoba. Recently retired as an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Peri-operative and Pain Medicine, she taught not only medical students and residents, but paramedical colleagues from many disciplines including nursing, respiratory therapy, health care aides and anesthesia clinical assistants. Over the course of her career, Dr. Littleford became known for delivering innovative lectures, seminars and rounds and exceling at one-on-one teaching in the clinical environment. She was sought out as a speaker at local, national, and international events.  

In addition to her clinical teaching, she built programs, redesigned care delivery systems, and developed novel curricula. Recognizing the power of video long before YouTube, Dr. Littleford produced “Intubating the Newborn” which was the standard instructional video for decades both in Canada and abroad. She was singled out for editorial direction and project leadership during development of the novel ‘Acute Care of at-Risk Newborns’ learning tool. With the rise of digital media, she undertook extra training in information literacy, leading her to design her department’s first online anesthesia-specific library, which she continues to update as a senior scholar.  One of her most challenging accomplishments was the creation of the education curriculum and training for the Anesthesia Clinical Assistant program at the University of Manitoba – the first in Canada to be regulated under a provincial medical regulatory body and the envy of many other jurisdictions.  She has received numerous teaching awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from her department at the University of Manitoba. 

Dr. Fiona Clement, PhD’06, is the department head of Community Health Sciences and the director of the Health Technology Assessment Unit at the University of Calgary.  She is an accomplished academic leader and has an international reputation for her expertise and leadership within the area of health policy and health economics. Dr. Clement’s research has guided evidence-informed changes to legislation, regulatory frameworks, and government policy on multiple issues including pharmacare. Her work in the field of health technology reassessment, which focuses on supporting health care systems to stop funding low value care, has defined the field. As it is estimated that 30% of health care is of low value, Dr. Clement’s work in this area has immense potential to both improve care and reallocate health care funding.  

She has received numerous awards for her work including being named one of 2020’s Most Powerful Women in Canada and being inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.