Our President
Dr. Mekalai Kumanan
President
Dr. Mekalai Kumanan attended Dalhousie University for her undergraduate studies, Master of Health Administration degree and medical school before completing her residency at the University of Western Ontario. Since 2008, Dr. Kumanan has served the community of Cambridge, Ontario as a family physician with Two Rivers Family Health Team. In addition to her dedication to the OCFP as a board member since 2016, Dr. Kumanan is the current Chief of Family and Community Medicine at the Cambridge Memorial Hospital. She has been an active leader with the Cambridge North Dumfries OHT, first as a member of the Governance Co-Design Group and the Primary Care Collaborative, and she remains a member of the Steering Committee. Dr. Kumanan continues to serve in both her primary care and hospital capacities.
Installed as the 64th President of the OCFP in September 2022, Dr. Kumanan has spent the first year of her term supporting family physicians through meaningful and impactful initiatives.
As a tireless advocate for the profession, she has met with government to present important solutions to improve family medicine and has been interviewed dozens of times to highlight the challenges millions of Ontarians face without access to a family doctor, the crushing administrative burden family doctors face and the need for team-based primary care.
Additionally, she’s kept family doctors informed of urgent and emerging information through her monthly President’s Message, delivered to more than 15,000 family doctors, and in her role as co-host of “Changing the Way We Work,” a community of practice, jointly led by the OCFP and U of T’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, drawing hundreds of participants every three weeks.
As Dr. Kumanan begins the second year of her term, she looks forward to continuing to advocate for primary care transformation while supporting her family physician colleagues across the province.
Photos from the official installation of Dr. Kumanan
The Ontario College of Family Physicians represents more than 15,000 family physicians across the province. We support our members by providing evidence-based education and professional development, promoting and recognizing leadership excellence in family medicine, and advocating for the vital role family physicians play in delivering the highest quality care to patients and families across Ontario.