Dr. Jan Sargeant recognized with Calvin Schwabe Award

Award honours lifetime achievement in veterinary epidemiology and preventative medicine

Dr. Jan Sargeant, retired professor Emerita in the Ontario Veterinary College’s (OVC) Department of Population Medicine, has been awarded the Calvin Schwabe Award for her significant contributions to the veterinary epidemiology and preventative medicine fields.

Dr. Sargeant received her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree at OVC which she used in practice for four years before returning to the college for an MSc and PhD in Epidemiology. Since then, Dr. Sargeant was on faculty at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University and Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University, before returning to the University of Guelph in 2007.

Her research interests include preventing and controlling the spread of disease from animals to people, food and water safety using a One Health approach. Her research interests also include linking methodologies and approaches across disciplines and among animal health and human health communities. She has been recognized as a global leader of systematic reviews and of research reporting guidelines in animal health, animal welfare and food safety. 

The result is 265 peer-reviewed publications and over 200 abstracts. She has mentored over 60 graduate students. 

She also served as the first director of the Center for Public Health and Zoonoses (CPHAZ) at the University of Guelph and is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and an inaugural Fellow of the Conference of Workers in Animal Diseases.  

The award is presented annually at the Calvin W. Schwabe Symposium by the Association of Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (AVEPM). Dr. Sargeant was presented with the award at the symposium on January 22, 2024.