Dr. Wortman is a Metis physician from northern Alberta. After working in construction for ten years he returned to school to obtain a BSc in Biology and Chemistry at the University of Alberta, an MD from the University of Calgary and Family Medicine training at the University of British Columbia. 

​After working in general practice he shifted to public health where he became the Associate Director of Sexually Transmitted Disease at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. He moved from there to Health Canada where he was a program specialist in HIV/AIDS and where he developed the Aboriginal component of the National AIDS Strategy.

​During this period he also developed the concept for the Dr. Peter AIDS Diary, a weekly television appearance by a young physician dying of AIDS, which achieved acclaim and resulted in an Academy Award nomination for a documentary compilation of the Diaries. 

​For the past ten years, Dr. Wortman has served in senior management positions in the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada where he is currently the Senior Medical Advisor.

​He recently completed a two-year research interchange at the UBC Faculty of Medicine where he studied the role of traditional diet in the prevention and treatment of obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in First Nations. In 2003, Dr. Wortman received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Medicine.