2025 Undergraduate Winner
Dr. Alex Young Soo Lee
Dr. Alex Young Soo Lee is a dedicated leader with extensive experience in advocacy, education, and health equity. He serves as Executive Vice-President and Director of Student Affairs for the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, leading national initiatives to enhance learner wellness and equity. As a University of Ottawa Senator, Alex contributed to educational policy development during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, he collaborated with Indigenous health leaders to establish the Indigenous Health Learning Lodge and advanced homeless health education. As a CMA Ambassador, Alex co-hosted financial literacy initiatives, fostering sustainability among learners. His work reflects a commitment to inclusion, collaboration, and systemic change. He currently serves on the Canadian Medical Association Board of Directors as the medical student representative.
Alex holds a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Ottawa and a Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) from McMaster University. A finalist in the Radiology and Artificial Intelligence Research Competition, Alex’s innovative proposal focused on transforming geriatric care through mobile radiology services. He has received prestigious awards, including the Canadian Association of Medical Education Rising Star Excellence Award, Ontario Medical Association Medical Student Achievement Award, and Canadian Science Policy Youth Award. Alex’s achievements reflect his dedication to healthcare innovation, education, and leadership, with a focus on addressing health inequities and advancing medical education and policy.
Alex is a passionate advocate for equity and inclusion, drawing on lived experiences to champion under-represented perspectives. With a commitment to Indigenous health, he has collaborated on strategic initiatives to address systemic inequities. As a mental health advocate, Alex has led efforts to support 2SLGBTQ+, Indigenous, and marginalized youth. His work with homeless health education highlights his dedication to addressing healthcare barriers for vulnerable populations. Alex’s journey is grounded in allyship, cultural humility, and a belief in creating meaningful change through collaboration, making him a compassionate and inclusive leader in the medical community.
Alex’s SBSAL funding will be used to support the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Housing First Teams Approach leadership program, a community elective that aims to train a cohort of culturally safe medical learners through collaboration with the Homeless Health Network. The program focuses on training learners to take a leadership role in providing comprehensive medical care for the homeless population by securing income assistance, managing physical and mental health, treating substance abuse through a harm reduction approach, and managing the patients with an interdisciplinary team to integrate the individual into the community. The program equips learners with the skills and techniques required to provide comprehensive care and take leadership role in advocacy-related work.
I would like to sincerely thank the CaRMS Awards Committee and the Board for awarding me the prestigious Sandra Banner Student Award for Leadership. I am deeply grateful for this honour. I plan to use the funds from this award to improve the health and well-being of some of the most vulnerable populations in our communities, including those who are homeless and other marginalized individuals. The work I do is both grounded in and guided by my lived experiences, as well as by the incredible mentors and teachers who have positively influenced my learning journey. As well, I am incredibly grateful to those with lived experiences who have helped guide the policy reform in our community work, and my team and I are committed to giving back to the community that has helped us grow.
Ultimately, my goal is to continue advancing efforts in homeless health and to promote a ‘Housing First’ approach to patient care and community service, with the hope that these initiatives will have a lasting, positive impact on the people I serve. I also hope to contribute to the ongoing development of educational curricula and support the important work being done by Ottawa Inner City Health and similar organizations that champion equitable, community-based care.
Thank you once again for this incredible recognition. I am honoured and inspired to continue this journey of leadership and service, and I look forward to working alongside my colleagues and coworkers who have guided me through this journey and are equally committed to creating meaningful, lasting change in the community that we serve.
2025 Postgraduate Winner
Dr. Owen Luo
Dr. Owen Dan Luo is a third-year Internal Medicine resident physician at McGill University. While providing patient care in hospitals and clinics around Montreal, Owen witnesses the growing health impacts of climate change on Canadians and the significant carbon footprint of healthcare delivery.
This motivated him to design planetary health medical education competencies and the Climate Wise slides to prepare Canadian medical students to practice in a climate crisis as a past Co-Chair of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students Health and Environment Adaptive Response Taskforce (CFMS HEART). He was a co-author of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) Academic Health Institutions’ Declaration on Planetary Health with signatories from medical faculties across Canada and internationally, and of a position paper proposing avenues to better represent planetary health within the upcoming 2025 CanMEDS update, an internationally-recognized physician competency framework.
Owen has built grassroots movements to decarbonize healthcare by founding and co-directing Project Green Healthcare/Projet Vert la Santé, the first-of-its-kind national community of practice of medical students leading sustainability quality improvement projects in healthcare systems across Canada. He was a co-author of the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine’s (CSIM) Climate Conscious Choosing Wisely Canada Recommendations to provide guidance to general internists and hospitalists to practice high-value care on a smaller carbon footprint. He also shares his expertise in planetary health medical education and healthcare sustainability on numerous interdisciplinary national advisory boards. Owen aims to continue advocating for climate action and healthcare sustainability throughout his career as a physician.
The SBSAL funding Owen received will help support Project Green Healthcare/Projet Vert la Santé (PGH/PVLS). PGH/PVLS provides medical student teams with funding, a structured educational program on sustainability QI and leadership, and mentorship by physician and healthcare administrators. Since 2020, 19 medical student teams from 14 medical schools across 9 Canadian provinces have launched projects to reduce the carbon footprint of their local health systems and learned skills to become future healthcare sustainability champions.
I am deeply grateful and honoured to be selected as the 2025 recipient of the Sandra Banner Student Award for Leadership (SBSAL) Postgraduate Award. Thank you CaRMS for creating and administering this award to recognize and empower Canadian trainee leadership. This award is a powerful affirmation of the importance of integrating planetary health and sustainability into our academic health institutions and healthcare systems in a climate crisis.
I would not be on this path of climate action without the unwavering support of my mentors who have guided me, my peers and colleagues who have challenged and inspired me, and my friends and family who have grounded me every step of the way. Their encouragement and belief in my vision of climate-conscious healthcare have been a constant source of strength and motivation. I share this recognition with them.
The SBSAL award funding will directly support the continued growth of the Project Green Healthcare/Projet Vert la Santé program – a national community of practice that I founded that empowers medical learners to lead climate action within healthcare. With this support, I am excited to expand the program’s reach to include resident physicians, strengthen our healthcare sustainability quality improvement curriculum, and continue to mentor and build community amongst healthcare trainees across Canada who are committed to building a more just, climate-resilient, and environmentally-sustainable healthcare system.
As an internal medicine resident, I bear witness to the growing impacts of the climate crisis on patient health and healthcare’s significant environmental impacts – solidifying my commitment to advancing planetary health throughout my career as a physician. Leading PGH/PVLS will support my development of critical skills in project management, team coordination, medical education, QI, and evidence-informed advocacy to generate meaningful change. In addition, complementing my bottom-up support of trainee-led sustainability QI projects with my other top-down advocacy work for planetary health will enable me to scale promising projects and build movements for broader, system-wide changes to advance environmentally sustainable health systems.
This award humbles me on my journey as an emerging planetary health and healthcare sustainability leader and serves as a renewed source of inspiration to act with urgency and purpose in this climate crisis. I accept this award not only in recognition of my past work, but also as a commitment to continue fostering the leadership, collaboration, and systems change needed to align patient care with the health of our planet.
Thank you CaRMS and the SBSAL Awards Committee once again for this extraordinary honour.
After thoughtful consideration, the CaRMS Board of Directors has determined that 2025 will be the final year that the SBSAL is awarded. The Board is immensely proud of the inspiring individuals who have been recognized over the years, and extends a heartfelt thanks to all past recipients and those who have supported this initiative. The Board also recognizes the enduring legacy of Sandra Banner’s visionary leadership. As Executive Director of CaRMS from 1986 to 2015, Ms. Banner was instrumental in the organization’s growth and development. While this marks the conclusion of the award, we look forward to celebrating excellence in new and evolving ways going forward.
