Council Award
A health
advocate for
adolescents
Dr. Stephen Feder
photo: D.W. Dorken
A
physician at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO)
has been honoured
with a Council Award for his work
helping teens with a variety of
complex health issues.
Dr. Stephen Feder specializes in
the area of adolescents with eating
disorders, transgender teens, and
other young people with various developmentally-based issues. Over the course of his
25 years at CHEO, he has spearheaded an
outstanding adolescent health program that
meets the needs of thousands of patients with
complex health issues, and he has raised the
profile of, and expanded the research in, this
important area of medicine.
Dr. Feder first became interested in adolescent health as a family physician in the
1980s during the advent of HIV-AIDS, when
he would appear at local high schools in his
community to talk about prevention. He
went on to do an Adolescent Health Fellowship at the University of Minnesota before
accepting a role at CHEO in 1991. When he
started there, he was essentially a team of one,
but he has since built the hospital’s adolescent
health capacity to a team of four.
“Dr. Feder is a consummate academic
physician,” wrote Dr. Ciaran M. Duffy, Chief
of Pediatrics at CHEO. “He has devoted his
time and efforts to ensure that exemplary
clinical care is provided to this most complex
of populations. He has ensured through his
efforts that an expert team is in place to be
available for this population to ensure that
their needs are met … I can think of no other
physician more deserving of this particular
Council Award.”
Recently, we spoke to Dr. Feder about
his life and work.
Q: What have been some of the challenges in building awareness of adolescent medicine as a distinct area of care?
A: Working with youth obliges the practiIssue 1, 2016 Dialogue
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