Brian P. Scharfstein - Certified Pedorthist (Canada)

Brian Scharfstein is a Canadian Pedorthist specializing in care of the diabetic foot.  He is the principal owner of Canadian Footwear and the FootHealth Centre in Winnipeg and Calgary.  He has served as a board member and a volunteer of the Canadian Diabetes Association in Manitoba.

Brian’s passion for footwear and footcare dates to his childhood as he grew up in the family footwear business.  Brian subsequently pursued his education at Northwestern University in Chicago in the prosthetics and orthotics department to further his training as an orthopedic shoe technician at Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) and undertook further training with Dennis Janisse at the Milwaukee General Hospital.  Brian has been able to take his skill and create the FootHealth Centre, a centre of excellence for the management of lower extremity problems in persons with all types of orthopedic, rheumatologic, and diabetic complications.  Brian is an active member of the Health Sciences Centre Diabetic Foot and Complicated Wound Clinic where he is an integral part of the healthcare team.  Through this affiliation with the Health Sciences Centre, Brian is actively involved in the management of patients with diabetic foot complications, and in the teaching of trainees in medicine, occupational and physiotherapy, as well as, podiatry and Pedorthics.  Brian is also actively involved in the teaching of nurses

  Brian's belief that everyone should have shoes led to the expansion of the SOS Footwear project in 2007 to include the “Fit Feet on the Street” program.  Most of the footwear given away is done so on an individual basis working closely with local charitable organizations like Siloam Mission and the Salvation Army. 

Volunteer Community Groups/Programs

• Fit Feet on the Street Program
• Two / Ten Foundation SOS Program
• Health Science Centre Clothing Depot
• Jewish Child and Family Services
• Grow Winnipeg initiative

Business / economic development organizations

• Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce
• Manitoba Chamber of Commerce

Over the past three years, Canadian Footwear has employed over fifty full time and twenty part time employees at all of  our locations. These numbers include management, administration, and front line retail personnel. Our overall success is directly attributed to our ability to retain long term associates and limited turnover. Our ongoing commitment is to advancement of education and training. Our financial investment in education and training grows every year and may be the single most important line item on our financial statements. We are a teaching facility and a practicum site for the University of Western Ontario.  Students from Red River Community College and Winnipeg Technical College regularly shadow our professionals to further their own health care training. This work relations program continually heightens our standards of practice and offers new challenges for our team