Laura Targownik, MD MSHS

Associate Professor, Gastroenterology & Hepatology
University of Toronto
Mount Sinai Hospital
Toronto, Ontario

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.

Since 2019, Dr. Targownik has been a full-time faculty member at the University of Toronto, where she serves as the Division Director for Gastroenterology & Hepatology. She is currently based at Mount Sinai Hospital, where she provides clinical care and is a clinician-scientist. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Toronto,  she was the Chief of the Section of Gastroenterology at University of Manitoba, an Associate of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and the Associate Director of the IBD Research and Clinical Centre.​

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. 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 150 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.