Pat Mandy Inclusion Award winner committed to community care
When Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) social worker Michelle Valdez learned she would receive the 2025 Pat Mandy Inclusion Award, she was overcome with emotion.
“I’ve been overwhelmed with joy that I was even acknowledged and nominated for this award in the first place,” she says. “I have only been at HHS for a year, and to see the work that I have done in the past year being recognized…it’s an amazing feeling.”
The annual award celebrates an individual who shows strong leadership in advancing equity, diversity and inclusion at HHS. It’s an award established in honour of Pat Mandy, an influential health care leader and advocate for equity and Indigenous rights and health in Hamilton.
“Michelle’s actions demonstrate a profound accountability that strengthens equity and inclusion at multiple levels in the communities we serve.”
Valdez works as a social worker in HHS’s Gender Diversity Program and Adolescent Medicine Clinic. For her, this recognition connects deeply to her approach to care. Her work is grounded in what she calls “the ideology and practice of community care.”
“Essentially, what that means to me is that we all have a collective responsibility in the well-being of one another,” she says. “In that connection with community, relational accountability, empathy and solidarity all become expressions of reciprocity in action.”
Melanie Carrigan, Interim Clinical Manager of Adolescent Medicine, nominated Valdez for the award.
“Michelle’s actions demonstrate a profound accountability that strengthens equity and inclusion at multiple levels in the communities we serve,” says Carrigan. “She is a proactive innovator and leader, driving equitable and inclusive change within HHS by advocating strongly for integrating diverse perspectives into projects and program development, such as her contributions to the EDI committee and the design of new psychosocial support groups for youth with complex needs.”
Rooted in lived experience
Valdez’s passion for inclusion and equity stems from her own life. “I look back at the intersections of my own identity being a queer Afghan woman, growing up with immigrant parents who fled a war in Afghanistan,” she explains. “Just growing up with parents and grandparents and elders and watching them navigate systems that were not built to support them.”
“My hope for these guides is to foster connection for equity deserving groups, and a space for racialized families to be guided to culturally grounded supports and community.”
As a child, she often acted as an interpreter for her family. “Those experiences shaped my perspective on the systems that are created and ways that they can be improved to better support different families and diverse human experiences.”
Before joining HHS, Valdez spent five years at Hamilton Child and Family Support, advocating for racialized newcomer families and children. Her commitment to systemic advocacy continues in her hospital role, where she integrates community care principles into the clinical setting.
Building bridges within care
In her first year at HHS, Valdez has worked to make health care more accessible and culturally responsive. While in the Pediatric Chronic Pain Program, she began developing equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives aimed at reaching racialized and newcomer communities.
Several people are nominated for the Pat Mandy Inclusion Award each year.
“Part of that is providing that community care connection within health care. To reach out to those who may not have family doctors, those who are most vulnerable and at risk,” she says. “It’s about recognizing how the social determinants of health impact people’s experiences and health outcomes in unjust ways, and ensuring no one is left behind..”
To help bridge those gaps, she created community resource guides for Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Niagara. These outline culturally specific and equity-based supports for families. “My hope for these guides is to foster connection for equity deserving groups, and a space for racialized families to be guided to culturally grounded supports and community,” she says.
She also developed a diversity calendar that combines cultural, religious, and professional observances into one place. “It helps us be more mindful and start conversations on culture and identity with the families that we work with,” she explains. “We can be a little bit more purposeful when scheduling things or making sure we don’t ask a family to come in on a day that they’ll be away for a religious practice.”
A shared responsibility
For Valdez, inclusion work is an ongoing, collective process. “EDI work isn’t just about the big picture,” she says. “It’s about the micro and macro levels of meaningful change, the small everyday actions we take that make people feel seen and valued. That’s why every step we take, no matter how small, moves us closer to equity and belonging.”
She’s quick to credit her colleagues, too. “You can’t move forward EDI work without the people that are also at the table listening and encouraging and promoting the work with you,” she says. “I’ve had the privilege of working with such amazing teams, the Pediatric Chronic Pain program as well as my newer teams, the Gender Diversity and Adolescent Medicine programs, who move forward this important work.”
Though she’s only been at HHS for a year, Michelle Valdez’s work has already made a lasting impact built on care, connection, and joy.
