Dr. Andrea Furlan

Dr. Andrea Furlan is a scientist at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH). She is also a physician and senior scientist at the KITE Research Institute—the research arm of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute at University Health Network—and a professor in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Physiatry at the University of Toronto. She is chair of ECHO (Extension for Community Health-care Outcomes) Ontario Chronic Pain and Opioid Stewardship at UHN, and co-chair of ECHO Occupational and Environmental Medicine and ECHO for Return to Work of Public Safety Personnel at IWH. 

Furlan completed her residency in physiatry at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. She obtained her PhD in clinical epidemiology from the University of Toronto. Her thesis focused on methods to search and analyze non-randomized studies of interventions for low-back pain. She completed a two-year clinical fellowship in physiatry at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. Furlan received the Pain Excellence Award in 2020 by the Pain Society of Alberta, and she is the recipient of the 2021 Canadian Pain Society’s Excellence in Pain Mentorship Award. 

Her main research interests include rehabilitation medicine, chronic pain, low-back pain and neuropathic pain, with a methodological focus on systematic reviews and meta-analyses. She has over 130 publications in peer-reviewed journals, has written seven book chapters and has been an invited speaker at many local, national and international conferences, and is frequently sought by the media for interviews. During the Covid-19 pandemic she started a Youtube channel to share her knowledge about chronic pain worldwide that has reached more than 620,000 subscribers.