University launches Canada's first public health faculty
Written By: Richard Cairney
2006-03-17
; "University launches Canada’s first public health faculty")
It was a busy day for the University of Alberta board of governors, which approved the creation of Canada's first university faculty dedicated to public health, a $1-billion budget and construction of a fourth floor on its new downtown building.U of A President Indira Samarasekera called creation of the new School of Public Health "historic."
"This is the first School of Public Health in the country - this is historic," Samarasekera told board members. "It has taken people of vision to create something that is going to set apart our university and our province, given our relationships with the universities of Calgary and Lethbridge."
The School of Public Health will draw students, academics and researchers from a variety of disciplines, absorbing the Faculty of Medicine's Department of Public Health Sciences and the university's Centre for Health Promotion Studies, and will collaborate with public health research activities at the universities of Calgary and Lethbridge. It will focus on prevention and wellness, said Roger Palmer, the faculty's interim dean.
"We will look at the prevention of injury and disease rather than the treatment of it," said Palmer, a former deputy minister with Alberta Health and Wellness. "Across the country all the public health activity has been embedded in schools of medicine, which focus on treatment more than prevention."
Preventive measures, he observes, have made tremendous impacts on society's well being.
"Simple things like clean water and immunization, pre-natal and post-natal care have made really big differences to society," he said. "Hospitals have big transplant centres, which are great - but the results are more dramatic for the individual than for society."
That is the mandate of public health - to improve the overall health of the population through prevention. Outbreaks like SARS and the threat of avian flu have reinforced the need for greater public education, research and training in public health.
The School of Public Health will offer graduate studies and will begin teaching and research programs in September. Among the school's initiatives will be a strengthened professional program leading to a Master's of Public Health.
The board also approved building a fourth floor atop the Bay building in the city's downtown core. The university acquired the historic building last year through a deal with municipal, provincial and federal governments. The fourth floor addition, Vice-President (Facilities and Operations) Don Hickey said, will cost about $20 million and will add needed capacity to the building.
The building's main tenant will be TEC Edmonton, a technology transfer centre run by the U of A and Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, which will occupy the fourth floor and most of the third. Non-credit Faculty of Extension and School of Business courses will be offered at the building, which will also house private tenants.
The board of governors also approved a $1-billion budget. Highlights of the document include $231.7 million in construction and renovation projects. The university's 2006-07 consolidated budget is balanced but there is a $7-million shortfall in this year's operating budget.
Vice-President (Finance and Administration) Phyllis Clark said utility costs are to blame for the deficit, adding that a plan is in place to eliminate the university's debt within 10 years.
"If we want to bring the budget into alignment we'd have to introduce cuts and cuts across the faculties and administrative units are extremely devastating and would turn the institution back into a place we don&rsquot;t have to be," she said. The U of A, she added, "is probably in a better position than most other (Canadian) institutions are."
This article originally appeared in Express News.