Leslie Shanks

Leslie Shanks is a Canadian medical doctor who served as the president of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, the medical director of MSF Netherlands, and who led humanitarian responses in Yugoslavia, Zaire and Sudan.

Education Shanks graduated from Queen's University in 1988.

Career

Employment Shanks career started with work in northern parts of Canada providing healthcare to Indigenous communities. After her field work, she became the medical director of MSF's Operational Centre in Amsterdam where she was part of a group that shifted MSF towards open sharing of medical data. She is currently the medical advisor to the OCA council of the MSF Operational Center Amsterdam and temporary member of the International Board of MSF, https://www.msf.org/international-board

She has worked as the medical director at both the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto providing care to trans patients, and also at Inner City Health Associates, the Toronto organization that provides care to people experiencing homelessness.

Selected publications

De Lange, Rink, et al. "Keeping It Simple: A Gender-Specific Sanitation Tool for Emergencies." Waterlines, vol. 33, no. 1, Practical Action Publishing, 2014, pp. 45–54.