Jennifer Gibson

Professor Jennifer Gibson, PhD MA, BA, BSc is a Canadian bioethicist based in Toronto, Ontario.

She has advised governments and policymakers on topics such as medical assistance in dying, public health emergency preparedness, health technology assessment, drug funding and supply, and resource allocation.

Gibson received a BA and BSc from the University of Calgary, and a MA from the University of Western Ontario.

Gibson received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto with a focus on ethical issues in contemporary health institutions and systems.

Gibson is the Sun Life Financial Chair in Bioethics and Director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. She is Associate Professor in the Division of Clinical Public Health and the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.¹⁾ She is also a faculty member for the Institute for Pandemics.²⁾

Gibson founded and leads the ‘Ethics and AI for Good Health’ program to explore and engage emerging ethical and social issues associated with AI-enabled technologies in health care and public health.

She is also the director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.³⁾

Gibson is a member of the College of Reviewers at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).⁴⁾

In 2015-2016, Gibson was appointed as co-chair of the Provincial-Territorial Expert Advisory Group on Physician-Assisted Dying, which informed the development of Canada's legal framework for medical assistance in dying (MAID).⁵⁾

She also serves as the Bioethics Advisor to the Ontario COVID-19 Health Coordination Table and co-chair of the Ontario COVID-19 Bioethics Table.⁶⁾ The bioethics table reports to the Ontario Ministry of Health.⁷⁾

In this position, Gibson raised concerns in April 2021 at public health enforcement measures laid out by the Government of Ontario. They explained that heightened policing and surveillance did not contribute to reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and disproportionately affected black and indigenous, as well as “racialized persons, essential workers, persons with disabilities, poor and working class communities, and others who have already been profoundly impacted by COVID-19.”⁸⁾

She was also a member the Joint Ministers’ Roundtable on the Ontario Health Data Platform in 2020.

Gibson is an expert for the Council of Canadian Academies.⁹⁾ In 2017-18, she co-chaired the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Medical Assistance in Dying and chaired the Working Group on Advance Requests for MAID, the reports of which were tabled with the Canadian federal government in December 2018.

Gibson is a member of the executive team of the Global Institute of Psychosocial, Palliative and End-of-Life Care (GIPPEC).¹⁰⁾

GIPPEC is sponsored by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, and is partnered with the African Palliative Care Association, Kensington Hospice, University of Ferrara, University Health Network and the University of Toronto.¹¹⁾

Gibson is a member of the WHO Expert Group on Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health for the World Health Organization.¹²⁾

Gibson is a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.¹³⁾