TORONTO — The University of Toronto is opening a new school of public health in a bid to strengthen its research in the field and raise its international reputation.
To help kick start that effort, the university today announced it has lured a well-known researcher in the field, Jack Mandel, back to Canada to lead the new graduate school. It also unveiled a $20-million donation from Toronto real estate investor Paul Dalla Lana, owner of a large portfolio of medical office buildings. The school will be named after Mr. Dalla Lana and his wife Alessandra.
“This is really going to put us at the forefront of public health not only nationally, but internationally, said Catharine Whiteside, U of T's dean of medicine. “This expands our mandate. It makes it broader in scope and in scale. It will give us the critical mass to be competitive. We are in a position to attract some of the best people in the world.”
The new school will be at the centre of the country's largest network of public health researchers and educators, the university said.
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Dr. Mandel, a native of Winnipeg, who is chair of epidemiology at Atlanta's Emory University said he is returning to Canada after more than three decades in the United States because of the opportunity he sees with the opening of the new school.
“There is a lot of capacity in Toronto,” he said, noting the work being done at hospitals, the university and organizations such as Cancer Care Ontario. He said the new school will build on the expertise of the university's public health department, which has about 300 faculty working with it and more than 250 graduate students. “It will be different than starting from zero,” he said.
Dr. Mandel, who takes his post in September, is best known for his groundbreaking research on the benefits of colorectal cancer screening. He said there are far more opportunities and funding in Canada today for researchers in his field than when he left in 1972. He hopes to build on growing federal and provincial interest in the field of public health at the new school.
Dr. Whiteside said the school will stay at the same location as the existing department of public health. Current students and faculty will remain, but it is expected that their numbers will increase in the coming years. The new school, she said, will focus on several areas including public health policy, global health, and disease prevention and will train a range of health care professionals including doctors, nurses, dentists, and nutritionists.
The $20-million gift from Mr. Dalla Lana will be used to fund scholarships and research chairs in the new school.
Mr. Dalla Lana's holdings include NorthWest Healthcare Properties, a private Toronto company that owns and manages a national portfolio of doctor's offices and health care facilities.
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