Dr. Laura Targownik graduated from the University of Manitoba Medical School in 1997 and completed her residency training in Internal Medicine in 2000. She then went to University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to complete a 3-year fellowship in Digestive Diseases while also obtaining a Master’s of Science (Health Services) from the UCLA School of Public Health. From 2003 until 2019, Dr. Targownik has been a full-time faculty member at the University of Manitoba in the Section of Gastroenterology where she currently holds the rank of Associate Professor. She is also an Associate of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and is the Associate Director of the IBD Research and Clinical Centre. Prior to joining the Department of Medicine as Division Director for Gastroenterology, she was the Chief of the Section of Gastroenterology at University of Manitoba.

Dr. Targownik is a nationally recognized researcher in IBD and has held funding from Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, the American College of Gastroenterology and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She is currently on the Examiner’s Board on the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for Gastroenterology.

Dr. Targownik is a member of numerous research consortia, including the Canadian IBD Research Consortium, the Canadian Gastrointestinal Epidemiology Consortium and the Canadian IBD Transitions in Care Network. She is also the chair for Equity and Diversity for the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology where she is spearheading several initiatives with the aim of improving the representation of women in positions of leadership and influence in gastroenterology. She has authored or co-authored over 140 articles in peer-reviewed publications. Her current focus of research is in using secondarily collected data sources to evaluate the costs and benefits of medications used in IBD, assessing how to optimize delivery of mental health care for persons with IBD in diverse practice settings, and on assessing the impact of patient and physician gender on the patient journey and associated outcomes