Dr. Dorothy L. Moore: In memoriam

The Canadian Paediatric Society

You only had to work once with Dr. Dorothy Moore, to recognize the special gifts she brought to any task and the privilege it was to watch her deploy them. Dorothy’s passing on Monday, April 6th, is a huge loss to the profession she loved and a legion of friends and colleagues who had the pleasure of working alongside her, many of whom are CPS members. Because she was unflaggingly generous and present in whatever she undertook, Dorothy also leaves a huge legacy of gratitude in her wake. What we at the CPS can speak best to is her volunteer involvement, which remained constant and truly exceptional over many years.

This arc began in 2002, when Dorothy joined the Infectious Diseases and Immunization Committee (IDIC). She brought her vast ID specialist knowledge and expertise first to review, then to writing several key clinical documents. Attention to detail and clarity of language were early hallmarks that she soon brought to CPS books as well. As an editorial board member for the revised edition of Well Beings: A Guide to Health in Child Care, she took two core chapters on preventing and managing infections under her wing, thoroughly re-working them in 2008 and updating them in 2015. Her descriptions of illness transmission processes and the protocols needed to prevent and control them have kept the book in demand among Canadian childcare programs and educators, and in print to this day. The next book project was Your Child’s Best Shot: A Parent’s Guide to Vaccination, which Dorothy first reviewed with other members of the IDIC in 2006. She then stepped into the editor’s role for the 4th edition in 2015, recasting much of the text in new and definitive ways. She also edited ‘First Shots, Best Shot’, a community teaching tool based on YCBS.

Dorothy’s curiosity and sense of fun were thoroughly contagious, throughout. Working “on the same page” with her required precision and accuracy, but it was always, and most enjoyably, a labour of love.

Dorothy served as a member of the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program (CPSP) Steering Committee from 2009 to 2017, and as liaison for the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) on the IDIC from 2011 to 2026. She was a tireless representative of and advocate for immunization, sharing and explaining NACI’s evolving vaccine policies, honing public messages, and updating flu vaccine recommendations with every new season. As an educator and chair of the Vaccine Hesitancy Project Advisory Group, Dorothy helped develop ‘Moving to Acceptance’, a workshop and online module providing HCPs with skills and information for counselling vaccine-hesitant patients and families. She also shepherded the ‘Vaccine-preventable diseases’ module in the EPIC series though its latest iteration.

We have tried to demonstrate our appreciation for Dorothy’s rich legacy over the years with CPS awards: Life Membership in 2015, the Danielle Grenier Member Recognition Award in 2022, and the Alan Ross Award, bestowed within days of her passing. But the simple truth is that we are beyond grateful for what she’s done for children and youth in Canada, for every ‘teaching moment’ she spent with us, and we already miss her beyond words.

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