Elizabeth Inness receives Dean's Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement

Elizabeth Inness (MSc '08 RSI, PhD '15 RSI) is the recipient of this year's Temerty Medicine Alumni Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement, recognizing her contributions to the advancement of health and health care as truly extraordinary.

Inness has spent her 34-year career pursuing and achieving excellence in physiotherapy and neurorehabilitation. Her advocacy for patients, connection to clinical care and keen interest in clinical-research partnerships have advanced physiotherapy practice across Canada and around the globe. Among the many innovative developments she’s led or co-developed are the Community Balance & Mobility Scale, which has been adopted worldwide; the Mobility Innovations Centre at Toronto Rehab-University Health Network (UHN), which has set the standard for knowledge translation into practice; the Canadian Stroke Community-based Exercise Recommendations Update 2020; and the Toronto Rehab Telerehab Toolkit, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic that has seen international uptake. She is also an Assistant Professor (status-only) in the Department of Physical Therapy. Her contributions have been recognized through numerous awards, most recently the Canadian Physiotherapy Association Medal of Distinction.

“We couldn’t be prouder to honour this year’s award recipients,” says Trevor Young, dean of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the University of Toronto’s vice-provost, relations with health care institutions. “They each embody the values of excellence, commitment and compassion that define our alumni community.”

This is an excerpt from a Temerty Medicine story.