Between Worlds: From Peru to Newfoundland
It takes a special kind of physician to thrive in both a Peruvian mining site and a Canadian boardroom. Dr. Oswaldo Ortiz has done just that.
He has years of global experience in occupational and environmental medicine. He spent his career tackling health risks in important industries. After moving to Canada, he noticed something surprising. Despite his experience, he couldn’t fully understand how the Canadian public health system worked.
"In mining, you rely heavily on the public health infrastructure. Whether it’s a stroke on-site or a spike in community illnesses, you need a system that works," Dr. Ortiz explains.
In regions like Newfoundland and Labrador, where he supported operations in Indigenous communities, the stakes were even higher. Suicide rates in these areas can be up to 200 times the national average. Clearly, technical skills weren’t enough.
What he needed was a new lens, one that connected occupational health to broader systemic thinking. This realization led to an important decision. He chose to enroll in the Executive Master of Health Administration (EMHA) at the Telfer School of Management.
Why Occupational Health Alone Isn’t Enough
Most companies treat occupational health as a compliance box. For Ortiz, that box had always been too small. His work at Vale Canada showed him the real gaps. Employees with chronic conditions had to deal with broken systems.
Hospitals, compensation boards, and insurers weren’t speaking the same language. The result? Delays, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities to prevent harm.
"I realized that if I didn't understand how the public system worked, I couldn't create sustainable programs"
In a very urgent case, the team asked Ortiz to create a mental health plan for a remote mining site. The site sat inside a vulnerable community facing a devastating mental health crisis. He remembers the eerie quiet of the town, the unspoken grief that settled like fog.
It wasn’t just about employee wellness programs. The operation sat within a broader community in pain. Public health stakeholders must be at the table.
"We had to look at population-level impacts," he says. That insight set him on a path toward systems leadership…one that the EMHA would eventually cement.
The EMHA Shift: From Technical Expertise to Systems Thinking
If you’ve ever worked in health or safety, you know the temptation of quick fixes. A faster return-to-work program here, an ergonomic intervention there. Ortiz had tried them all. But the EMHA taught him something different: real health leadership requires stepping back to see the full system.
"Courses like Quality Management and Health Economics helped me move from isolated interventions to holistic strategies," he says. The program showed him the hidden parts of healthcare. It explained how physician pay affects outcomes. It also showed how governance shapes patient experiences. Finally, it demonstrated how data can lead to better decisions.
This change was especially clear in his main project. He looked at the economic reasons for private investment in hip and knee surgeries. Nearly 90,000 Canadians experience delays each year, and workforce reintegration often hinges on these procedures. "The evidence is there," he insists. "But you need to frame it in a language decision-makers understand."
Ortiz also credits the EMHA with helping him design patient-centered programs that recognize lived experiences. One worker said, “I felt like a person again, not a case file,” after a reintegration plan designed with his family. "It’s about involving the worker, engaging families, and building feedback into every layer of care."
The result? A toolkit for transforming occupational health from a siloed function into a lever for public health innovation.
What It Means to Lead in Health Today
For Dr. Ortiz, health leadership means changing outcomes.
"One of the most valuable lessons from Telfer was that leadership isn’t always top-down," he explains. "It’s about enabling systems to function better."
He points to his work in Guinea as a prime example. There, Ortiz led a cost-effectiveness study showing how private sector health investments benefit both workers and communities. It wasn’t just a moral argument, it was a business case. Healthy communities mean stable operations.
Ortiz believes modern health leaders must be connectors. That means bridging data with empathy, strategy with frontline realities, and yes, occupational with public health. It also means asking hard questions: What are we missing? Who’s not at the table? And above all, how can we design systems that don’t just respond to crises but prevent them?
As he puts it,
"Real leadership is making systems smarter, not just bigger."
Global Lessons from Guinea to Ottawa
You don’t meet someone every day who has applied public health thinking in both rural Guinea and downtown Ottawa. But Dr. Ortiz sees surprising parallels. "In both places, fragmentation is the enemy. The issue is the same, whether it's a delay in the ER or a lack of emergency care in a rural mine. The systems are disconnected”.
Through the EMHA, Ortiz learned to map those disconnections and build bridges. He now advocates for programs that align employer resources with public health objectives. "We talk a lot about sustainability in mining," he reflects, "but health sustainability is just as critical."
For example, Ortiz helped shape a strategy that reimagines occupational health as a public health partner. This means adding return-to-work metrics to larger health data systems. It also means inviting community health agencies to join discussions.
The result? Better care, fewer duplications, and healthier populations. It’s not a silver bullet, he admits. But it’s a start.
Advice for Health Professionals at a Crossroad
So, what would Ortiz tell a seasoned health leader wondering whether they still have something to learn?
"Don’t underestimate how much a structured program can expand your field of vision," he says. "Even with global experience, I didn’t know what I didn’t know."
He urges others to embrace the discomfort of going back to school. The rigor, the peer discussions, the late-night assignments…all of it, he argues, serves a purpose. "You start seeing systems instead of silos. And that changes everything."
Ortiz also offers a reality check: "Healthcare isn’t getting simpler. Whether you work in policy, operations, or clinical care, the future belongs to integrators. People who can cross boundaries."
His final advice? Be open to reinvention. At any stage. The EMHA wasn’t just a degree for me; it was a bridge to a different kind of leadership.
If you’re someone who’s spent years in the weeds of compliance, documentation, or narrowly scoped programs, take a cue from Dr. Ortiz: Step back. Look up. And maybe, step forward into something bigger.
