Dr. Bonnie Henry was appointed as provincial health officer for B.C. on Feb. 1, 2018 and has led the province through the mayhem of COVID-19 with outstanding community leadership benefiting all people of B.C. Her exemplary commitment to the health and well-being of everyone in the province, and her tireless dedication to communicable disease prevention leaves a lasting legacy.

Dr. Henry was the deputy provincial health officer for three years starting in August 2014 and prior to that served as the interim provincial executive medical director of the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) from December 2013 until August 2014.

She was also BCCDC’s medical director of communicable disease prevention and control and public health emergency management. She served as medical director for the provincial emerging and vector-borne diseases program, as well as a provincial program for surveillance and control of health-care associated infections; a position she started in February 2005. When B.C. was infected with COVID-19 Dr. Henry was ready and led the country in prevention awareness to isolate the virus.

Prior to this she was responsible for the Toronto Public Health emergency services unit and the communicable disease liaison unit and was the operational lead in the response to the SARS outbreak in Toronto. Never one to hide from adversity she was a member of the executive team of the Ontario SARS scientific advisory committee.

Dr. Henry is a specialist in public health and preventive medicine and is board certified in preventive medicine in the U.S. She graduated from Dalhousie Medical School and completed a master’s in public health in San Diego. She also completed her residency training in preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and in community medicine at the University of Toronto.

She is an associate professor at the UBC faculty of medicine and has taught at Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria and in Ecuador at a university partnership. She is the past chair of Immunize Canada and a past member of the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the National Infection Control Guidelines Steering Committee. She chaired the Canadian Public Health Measures Task Group and was a member of the Infection Control Expert Group and the Canadian Pandemic Coordinating Committee responding to pandemic H1N1 (2009) influenza.She is the Chair of the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Preparedness task group which developed the plan on which Canada’s COVID-19 response was based. She is also the Chair of the Canadian Council of Chief Medical Officers of Health, which formed the basis for the Special Advisory Committee responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.

Dr. Henry has developed extensive knowledge and experience in three primary areas of public health over the past two decades: surveillance; public health emergency management; and infection prevention and control. She is recognized nationally and internationally in these areas and was specifically requested to represent Canada and support the WHO, Pan American Health Organization in initiatives in these areas working on the Ebola crisis in Uganda and polio eradication in Pakistan. She has also been requested to provide advice to several provincial governments. In recognition of this expertise, she has been invited to sit on the National Advisory Committee on Immunization and the National Infection Control Guidelines Steering Committee in Canada and a WHO Expert Group on Mass Gatherings and WHO Advisory Committee on Health Security Interface. The guidelines developed by these groups affect public health and health care programs across the country and internationally.

She has been involved with planning, surveillance and response to mass gatherings in Canada and internationally, including with the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games. She is the author of  Soap and Water and Common Sense, a guide to staying healthy in a microbe filled world and co-author with her sister Lynn Henry of Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe – four weeks that shaped a pandemic. She remains calm and compassionate in chaos, practical when others are paranoid, and serves with outstanding distinction in whatever health portfolio she takes on.