Ann Colbourne Profile
Ann Colbourne (Newfoundland & Corpus Christi 1980) greets every day with passion and commitment to infuse energy, derive insights and gift self to add meaning and positivity to life. Through philanthropy, leadership, mentoring, collaborations and reflections, Ann engages strategically to offer lifelong experience and wisdom from leading complex systems and teams through deep change. Her clinical empathy and intellect combined with her love of people, animals and nature offer transformative potential for meaningful thought progression. Volunteer roles with Rhodes Trust, including Co-Chair of the Rhodes Society, Mayo Clinic Alumni Association, Clinical Professor Emeritus at University of Alberta bring Ann’s innovative, strategic and some would say, inspired insights as together we seek our best lives.
Ann created and served in the role of Senior Medical Director of Culture, Transformation, and Innovation at Alberta Health Services. Over time, she served in a variety of clinical, academic, health care and governance leadership roles in many organizations including Mayo Clinic, University of Alberta, Memorial University of Newfoundland, NorQuest College and the Canadian Diabetes Association. In 2011, she received the Mayo Clinic Plummer Society Award of Excellence, as the first woman and the first international recipient of the award. In 2019 Ann received the honour of Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni. Ann holds MD, BMedSc and BSc Biochemistry degrees from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and an MA in Theology from the University of Oxford.
Rhodes Project: How would you describe your time at Oxford as a graduate student? What experiences were significant for you?
Ann Colbourne: It was a transitional and transformative space of personal growth and exploration. Immersion in Oxford pedagogy, history, educational and recreational opportunities with wonderfully vibrant and interesting people made this a simultaneously exciting and overwhelming experience. Every day amongst those dreaming spires I would pinch myself and ask, “What am I doing here? Do I belong here?” My answers always led me to places of exploring new studies and new skills – stretching, growing, and metamorphosing along the way. With the nurturing support of the Warden and Rhodes Trust staff I was able to pursue a degree for which I had no background but for which I had deep desire to explore. Tutorials, books, papers, history, legacy, early morning eights outings, bicycles, daffodils, and endless interesting conversations characterize the tapestry of this experience.
Rhodes Project: While at Oxford, you read for the MA in Theology. What drew you to this area of study, and how has it shaped your experiences since then?
Ann Colbourne: Originally accepted to read Medicine, I switched in the first term to PPP of which I chose Philosophy and Physiology. By the end of first term, I divined that reading Theology would address my deep desire to explore faith, doctrine, and the institution of religion. I was challenging my own beliefs, and wanted to know more, to go deeper. My biochemistry degree fused with thinking, discussing, and learning about dimensions of religious beliefs across cultures, over time and contextualized in history was for me, intellectual athleticism. I sometimes called it, “calisthenics of the mind.” This Oxford academic journey gave me life skills, ways of thinking and exploring that over a lifetime have been applied liberally in diverse ways in many situations. It offered ways to explore and understand how as humans we seek to frame meaning and value in life’s experiences. The essence of the degree has touched everything that came afterwards – and on a very pragmatic note, the New Testament Greek was a great foundation for learning medical terminology!
Rhodes Project: What inspired your interest in medicine? Over the course of your career, you have had a wide range of experiences in medical practice, education, research, and administration. How has this trajectory unfolded and what drew you to these areas?
Ann Colbourne: From childhood, I always said I was going to be a doctor. I have no idea where the notion originated. There were no physicians in the family, no nurses in the immediate family. I have always felt an innate drive to serve, to care for others. To read medicine is a privilege. Within medicine there are infinite pathways to serve and care. The chance to mature my experiences in science, faith, teaching and learning through individual clinical encounters as well as working in teams and exploring complex systems provided the intellectual parallel tracks of professional practice, teamwork, and transformational potential. In my early professional practice, I was drawn to service in rural Newfoundland and Labrador: prior to my Mayo Clinic residency, as District Medical Officer for southeast Labrador and post Mayo, as Internist for Grenfell Regional Health Services. I was able to juxtapose quality care paradigms when working in ultra-low tech compared with the ultra-high tech of urban tertiary care. I experienced how social health determinants are foundational to healthy individuals in healthy communities. My clinical practice focused heavily on chronic disease prevention and management. Every clinical encounter was a place of learning - for me, as people shared their stories, hopes, and aspirations and together we crafted approaches to achieving best state of personal health even when life was generating some challenges along the way. My latter years of clinical practice had a specific focus in Diabetes care. Insulin pumps and glucose sensors were in their infancy as our collaborative team-based practice grew and matured. We used technology and telehealth approaches to deliver timely relevance in our care model. We hosted town hall meetings with our care community and incorporated learning from those conversations to continue to evolve our model. We remain ever so grateful for the generosity shared with us by those whom we served.
Rhodes Project: You were the Senior Medical Director of Culture, Transformation and Innovation at Alberta Health Services in Alberta, Canada. Can you tell me about that work, and what issues were top-of-mind for you?
Ann Colbourne: One must think deeply about and understand clearly individual goals for personal health and how to collaborate to support individuals along their health journey. As my professional path evolved from rural to urban, from community to academic, from health system to health policy, from clinician to health leader I gathered the experiences for translation into conversations about what makes care meaningful and relevant. Over the years I experienced repetitive system dysfunction interfering with good people doing great work. I believe that there are ways to shape care environments that place co-equal emphasis on people receiving and people delivering care. Both need nurturing and support. Listen and understand the myriad of experiences in care – both receiving and delivering. Inherent in that understanding is the possibility of even better ways forward. I am as passionate today as ever for opportunities to continue to mature care environments as technology, artificial intelligence, and other influences evolve around us. I am so grateful for all the opportunities I had to share this passion with others who also want to make a difference big or small, every day. I am more an innovator than a researcher. My main regret is not investing more time to document all the learning and successes along the way.
Rhodes Project: Transforming health care processes into ‘interprofessional integrated plans’ has been a significant part of your focus. Why is it important for health care to move in this direction?
Ann Colbourne: Health systems today are fragmented along a variety of sector lines: primary, acute, chronic, and so on. As you look across different jurisdictions, it is hard to identify the one ideal system that provides seamless care grounded in rational social health determinant policies. At a policy level, how would populations benefit when every governmental policy decision is vetted through a social health determinant lens? At a governance level, how would end to end care delivery look in a unified governance for preventative and primary through tertiary and chronic care environments? At a team care level, how would we adjust our team conversations and behaviours, if we recognize that in every clinical encounter, the team we are on, is the team defined by the care needs of the individual in front of us? Who needs to be in the conversation with us to help this individual and loved ones achieve their best state of well being? The conversation needs to start in a different place, and we need to break some entrenched paradigms to achieve truly unified, iterative, adaptive care strategies – for individuals and populations. We don’t necessarily need more money. What we need is a disrupted, integrative space that seeks maximize opportunity for every person’s voice and skill set to flourish. The integrated plan of care is a pragmatic representation of that high performance space.
Rhodes Project: What have been some of the most personally significant projects you have worked on? What experiences do you take pride in?
Ann Colbourne: Whether it was rowing while at Oxford or leading undergraduate medical education or structuring a tele-health program for persons living with Type 1 Diabetes, my joy came from learning and with others, exploring new spaces. In a lifetime of self-imposed stretch goals, I have learned about my strengths and opportunities to grow; my accomplishments and ways to share. I believe each of us has gifts to share and it is our obligation to lean in to make this world a better place in which everyone has opportunity to thrive. Most recently I am so very proud of the Collaborative Care Model our team created within Alberta Health Services, the new women physician and scientist affinity group within the Mayo Clinic Alumni Association and my evolving understanding of meaningful ways to personally engage as well as engage others in philanthropic investment for good.
Rhodes Project: Reflecting on your experiences, what advice would you give to women who are in the early stages of their careers with an interest in medicine?
Ann Colbourne: First and foremost, to any young person, “believe that you can.” Life is short – understand that which gives you joy and pursue paths to achieve what is meaningful for you. A profession such as medicine can be all consuming. Finding the harmonious space of balance between self-care and care for others requires intention and adjustment over time, according to life stages and demands. Take time for reflection and periodic personal goal adjustment. I offer my three questions that have served me in good stead over time, and especially at times of transition: 1. am I happy where I am, 2. am I adding value, and 3. am I valued for what bring to this situation? If I can answer yes to all three, then perhaps I am where I need to be for now. The questions need to be asked at different frequencies over time and circumstance. Adapt them for your own use as may be beneficial to you.
Rhodes Project: Given Canada’s current healthcare challenges, what does good leadership look like to you?
Ann Colbourne: Great leadership navigates the tensions between transactional spaces and transformational spaces. In Canada, the socially funded healthcare environment is a very politicized and transactional place. To move health services forward, we can’t be held to political cycles—we need to operate from a place of core values and a vision for a better way forward. Great leadership will navigate this tension, live in the paradoxes, and always come from a place of core values.
Decision makers must get back to the basics. If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, what people need most is food and shelter. In health care, we’ve gone far down the path of impressive technology, and we tend to give that a lot of glory. We need to pay more attention to basic issues and social health determinants that have a far greater impact on overall health. We need to be more socially active in terms of working with other sectors to structure the environments for better health for all. This is the space where the magic needs to happen.
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