Dr. Caroline Tait is an internationally recognized member of the Canadian academic community and is a Métis scholar and member of the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan. Dr. Tait is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health Equity and Inclusion, University of Calgary. She holds a joint appointment as a Full Professor in the Faculty of Social Work and the Cumming School of Medicine.
Dr. Tait holds a Bachelor of Arts and Ph.D., Department of Anthropology, McGill University, a Master of Arts, Medical Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley and she completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Over the past 30 years she has been involved in community-based research with First Nations and Métis partners, with a focus on maternal health, mental health and addictions, Indigenous research and data sovereignty, and more recently on organ donation and transplantation (ODT). Her work in ODT focuses on healthcare equity in donation and transplant medicine for Indigenous peoples. Dr. Tait further advocates for voices of Indigenous persons with lived experience of ODT and Indigenous healthcare leaders to be included in ODT decision-making; for the collection of distinction based First Nations, Métis and Inuit ODT data, and she recently drafted a resolution for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs to support the prioritization of ODT as a health issue for FNs in British Columbia. The resolution was passed unanimously in June 2024 and moved on to the Assembly of First Nations in September 2025 for national adoption. Dr. Tait and colleagues were awarded a Project Grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research focused on Indigenous peoples and ODT. Dr. Tait is also a founding member of the International Indigenous Organ Donation and Transplantation Consortium.