Notisha Massaquoi named a 2023 YWCA Toronto Woman of Distinction
Published: March 23, 2023
Notisha Massaquoi, a world-renowned researcher in health equity, has been recognized with a 2023 YWCA Toronto Women of Distinction Award celebrating women who further gender equality in their field.
An assistant professor in the department of health and society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Massaquoi helped establish several organizations serving Black communities in Canada, including Africans in Partnership Against AIDS, TAIBU Community Health Centre and the Women’s Health in Women’s Hands (WHIWH). She also served as the executive director of WHIWH for 22 years.
“Health equity for me is the understanding that people with the lived experience of the inequity are the only experts that can help you find solutions,” she says.
In 2020-21, Massaquoi was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and researched the relationship between violence and health in Black communities. After joining U of T Scarborough she founded the Black Health Equity Lab, dedicated to researching health-care inequalities faced by the Black community in Toronto and co-creating solutions
“People can’t be complacent and say ‘Well, we're better off than we were 20 years ago.’ We all still have to be outraged at inequity. And then we all have to act on that collective outrage,” Massaquoi says.
