A new school of public health will offer classes for graduate students this fall, but will have to wait a little longer to secure its own site and staff on the University of Saskatchewan campus.
The school, one of three new programs launched by the university July 1, will focus on rural, agricultural and aboriginal health, social and behavioural aspects of health vaccine development and veterinary public health.
A school of environment and sustainability will address ecology and resource use while the public policy program will study public policy and administration.
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The undertaking is a work in progress, explained Jim Germida, the university’s vice provost.
“It will take time to evolve to full capacity,” he said. “Things don’t happen overnight.”
The school of public health will take over administration of the current masters programs in public health in addition to the college of medicine’s graduate programs in community health and epidemiology.
It will add graduate programs in vaccinology and immunotherapeutics, focusing on vaccine-preventable infectious diseases and create a community medical residency training program for doctors.
In the future, the school could also offer undergraduate programs. Enrolment is expected to increase threefold by 2011 to include 180 graduate students.
The school, which will have an executive director in place by 2008, is expected to one day include its own complement of staff. It will be housed within the college of medicine’s new academic health science complex, to be completed by 2011. For now, it will use existing training and class space on campus.
Germida said the school is a relatively new concept in Canada, where no such facility existed a decade ago.
Driving the need for improved management in Canadian health-care systems are concerns from recent outbreaks of infectious diseases like avian flu, West Nile virus, BSE and Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
Germida said the school of public health is uniquely positioned on a campus where there are faculties in human and veterinary medicine, nursing, dentistry and kinesiology. There are also opportunities to ally with research institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture, the Canadian Light Source and the department of community health and epidemiology.
He hoped it will help the university attract more students, faculty and scientists and contribute more research to the public health field.
