Dr. Laura Targownik MD, MSHS, FRCPC (she/her)

Associate Professor of Medicine
Departmental Division Director (Gastroenterology and Hepatology), University of Toronto
Past Chair, Diversity and Equity, Canadian Association of Gastroenterology
Staff Gastroenterologist, Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto)

Dr. Laura Targownik is currently a Clinician Researcher in the Mount Sinai Hospital Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic and is a member of the Zane Cohen Centre for Gastrointestinal Research. She is also the Director for the University of Toronto Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and is a faculty member of the University of Toronto School of Public Health Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation.  Prior to joining the Department of Medicine as Division Director for Gastroenterology, she was the Chief of the Section of Gastroenterology at University of Manitoba.

Dr. Targownik is a nationally recognized researcher in IBD and has held funding from Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, the American College of Gastroenterology and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She is currently on the Examiner’s Board on the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for Gastroenterology. She is the founder of the Ontario Best Practices Research Initiative in IBD, which seeks to be Ontario's premier source of real world data and patient-reported data on IBD in Ontario.

Dr. Targownik is a member of numerous research consortia, including the Canadian IBD Research Consortium, the Canadian Gastrointestinal Epidemiology Consortium and the Canadian IBD Transitions in Care Network. She is also the part chair for Equity and Diversity for the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology, and is the Current head of GI Women CAN!, where she is spearheading several initiatives with the aim of improving the representation of women in positions of leadership and influence in gastroenterology. She has authored or co-authored over 180 articles in peer-reviewed publications. Her current focus of research is in using secondarily collected data sources to evaluate the costs and benefits of medications used in IBD, assessing how to optimize delivery of mental health care for persons with IBD in diverse practice settings, and on assessing the impact of patient and physician gender on the patient journey and associated outcomes.

Session Learning Objectives:

• To be able to contextualize clinically relevant new data presented at DDW on the diagnosis, natural history, and medical and surgical management of Crohn's disease.