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Biography:
Dr. Caroline Tait is an internationally recognized member of the Canadian academic community and is a Métis scholar and member of the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan. Dr. Tait is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health Equity and Inclusion at the University of Calgary. She holds a joint appointment as a Full Professor in the Faculty of Social Work and the Cumming School of Medicine. This recent move follows a long period of successful service as a Professor of Psychiatry in the Medical College of the University of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Tait holds a Bachelor of Arts and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology, McGill University, a Master of Arts, Medical Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley and she completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Over the past 30 years she has been involved in community-based research with First Nations and Métis partners, with a focus on maternal health, mental health and addictions, and more recently on organ donation and transplantation. Her work in organ donation and transplantation focuses on healthcare equity in donation and transplant medicine for Indigenous peoples. Dr. Tait further advocates for voices of Indigenous persons with lived experience of ODT and Indigenous healthcare leaders to be included in ODT decision-making; for the collection of distinction-based First Nations, Métis and Inuit ODT data, and she recently drafted a resolution for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs to support the prioritization of ODT as a health issue for FNs in British Columbia. The resolution was passed unanimously in June 2024. She resides in Elk Ridge, Saskatchewan and has one son, Skender who resides in Montreal.