Dr. Cheryl Forchuk receives Distinguished University Professorship award

Dr. Cheryl Forchuk, a professor in Western University’s Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing with a cross-appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, has been an active faculty member at Western for more than 15 years. As a professor and associate director of Nursing Research in the Arthur Labatt School of Nursing, she has established herself as an internationally acclaimed researcher in the area of recovery and community integration for people with mental illness.

Dr. Forchuk uses the Participatory Action Research approach to engage mental health service consumers, clinical agencies and housing services, which has involved multiple, long-term relationships with community agencies, hospitals and the homeless sector, and led to developing a transitional discharge model of care based on continuous therapeutic relationships as the client transitions from hospital to community living.

“Dr. Forchuk’s record of service to the university, and the broader research community, is exemplary,” said Jim Weese, Health Sciences dean. “She is an effective builder, a collaborative scholar, and we are truly fortunate to have her as a member of our faculty. She represents the very best we have to offer. She is a credit to the university and a powerful ambassador of the good that can come from an academic institution.”

Since obtaining her doctorate in 1992, Dr. Forchuk’s research has garnered more than $11 million in external funding as a primary investigator. She is currently the primary investigator on eight grants and co-investigator on six more. Dr. Forchuk has published 82 peer-review journals, written 35 book chapters and presented more than 300 papers since coming to Western in 1997.

View the full list of 2014 DUPs on Western News.