Dr. Noni MacDonald, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics, and former Dean of the Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine, will be invested into the Order of Nova Scotia on November 26th, at Province House in Halifax.

The Order of Nova Scotia is the highest honour of the Province of Nova Scotia, recognizing those who have distinguished themselves in many fields of endeavour and have brought honour and prestige to themselves and their province

Dr. MacDonald is a pioneer in the medical community in Canada and internationally. She was the first pediatrician in Canada certified in pediatric infectious diseases by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She founded the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Ottawa in 1981 and led the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Service at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, serving as Chief until in 1999, she moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia to become the first woman in Canada to hold the position of Dean of a Faculty of Medicine when she took this post at Dalhousie University. Following her Deanship, she was a co-founder of the Canadian Center for Vaccinology in 2004, where she is still in active member.

Dr. MacDonald has had a prolific career. She has over 400 peer reviewed publications and was the founding Editor in Chief of the journal Pediatrics and Child Health from 1996-2016, the first Canadian pediatric journal. She has been a consultant and advisor to the World Health Organization for over 20 years, now serving on the Strategic Advisory Committee on Immunization, one of the 15 people who provide the major advice to WHO on Immunization.  

In 2008 she co-founded MicroResearch in Eastern Africa, a program that builds community capacity so that local health care providers can solve local health problems taking into account local context, culture and resources. This program has also been so successful in Eastern Africa that it is now used in Nova Scotia to serve communities across this province.  In September of this year, public health leaders in Saskatchewan have asked if MicroResearch Nova Scotia could be adapted to Saskatchewan and rolled out there.

In brief, Dr Macdonald has long been an advocate for and leader in children and youth health locally and nationally in Canada and for the past 20 years on a more global scale.