Dr. Cyndi Gilbert, ND (CCNM 2007) is a naturopathic doctor, author, and faculty member at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. As a healthcare provider with a focus on mental wellness, trauma, and sexual/reproductive health, she regularly bears witness to the health impacts of social determinants and experiences of discrimination. She advocates for a collaborative, anti-oppressive, and harm reduction approach that centers patients’ voices and experiences.  Cyndi facilitates cultural competency/safety training for naturopathic students as well as licensed NDs.  She supervises a free naturopathic teaching clinic at Queen West Community Health Centre in Toronto, with priority access provided to underserved patients.  Cyndi has been involved with many community and national grassroots initiatives, including the Centre for Gender and Social Justice, Sierra Club of Canada, OPIRG, Food Not Bombs, and various workers’ cooperatives.   She is passionate about the power of dandelions (and other weeds) to help create sociocultural change.

For the 2022 Toronto Naturopathic Conference Dr. Gilbert will be presenting: Putting Risk Factors in Context: An Anti Oppression Approach. 

This session will discuss the implicit biases about social determinants of health impact clinical understanding of risk as well as clinician decision making regarding assessment and treatment planning.

Learning Objectives

1. Review how the framing of social demographic categories can perpetuate stereotypes, resulting in pathologization of identity markers, and interpersonal/structural/institutional discrimination.

2. Learn strategies for reframing risk and sociodemographic markers within their sociocultural and historical contexts using an anti-oppression framework to reduce physician bias.