Michelle Fortier is a physical activity psychologist who is a professor at the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa. Her research program aims to understand and promote physical activity behavior change with an emphasis on motivation/enjoyment. She has extensive research experience examining the determinants of physical activity in different healthy and clinical populations. Her last SSHRC entitled: Understanding Physical Activity Adoption and Maintenance in Cardiac Rehabilitation ranked 7th in Canada and she is a co-investigator on a present SSHRC examining the effect of peer-mentorship on the quality of life of people with spinal cord injury.
Professor Fortier has also been heavily involved in the development and evaluation of physical activity promotion interventions. She is most known for the Physical Activity Counseling trial of which she was principal Investigator (PAC: 682 677 $). PAC was a theoretically-based motivational randomized controlled trial investigated the effect of adding a physical activity counselor/kinesiologist to the primary health care team. The trial influenced the emergence of the College of Kinesiology of Ontario. She has been teaching a physical activity counseling course stemming from this trial and has advocated for other courses across Canada by leading the Coalition for Physical Activity Counseling.
Recently, most of Michelle Fortier's research examines the impact of physical activity or organized sport on mental health. She is one of the eight national advisory council members of Exercise is Medicine Canada. She has had funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and from the Canadian Institutes in Health Research (CIHR) and has published in such journals as Psychology of Sport and Exercise, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. She is member of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity and the American College of Sport Medicine.