Anna Jarvis

Anna Jarvis, also known as Dorothy Anna Jarvis, is a retired professor at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Toronto, and was a staff Physician in the Division of Paediatric Emergency at SickKids. In 2016, she was appointed to the Order of Ontario.

Early life and education Jarvis is one of seven children; her parents were educators and her father's career took the family to different universities in England, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Nigeria, and the United States. He later worked at the University of the West Indies, where Jarvis attended medical school. Her medical program involved one foundational year of biochemistry, zoology and physics, and was followed by two years of preclinical studies, three years of clinical studies, and an internship year. After completing her compulsory year of internship in general, paediatric, surgery, neurosurgery and paediatric medicine, she got married and moved to Antigua. In Antigua, she started a family medicine practice and began a practice in emergency paediatrics in the Holberton Hospital Casualty Department. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she worked with Drs. Keith Greenway, Charles Malcomson, and Jose Venturelli to develop PALS Plus, an expanded Canadian version of the Paediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course published by the American Heart Association in 1983. Jarvis acted as the Canadian liaison to the Advanced Paediatric Life Support joint task force. As of 2025, she is a professor emerita at the University of Toronto.

Honors and awards In 2012, Jarvis received the Physicians Care Award from the Ontario Medical Society. There are two awards in Jarvis' name: the University of Toronto presents the Anna Jarvis Award for Teaching Excellence in Emergency Medicine, and the Canadian Paediatric Society presents the Anna Jarvis Paediatric Emergency Medicine Teaching Award.