U of Toronto creates school of public health with $20-million donation

The University of Toronto is creating what it calls Canada’s largest network of public health researchers and educators dedicated to disease prevention and health promotion after receiving a $20-million donation for a school of public health.The new school, named for benefactors Paul and Alessandra Dalla Lana, will deal with a range of public health issues, from emerging diseases like SARS to combating the rise of obesity to measuring the performance of Canada’s health-care system.

Paul Dalla Lana is founder and president of NorthWest Value Partners Inc. and chair of NorthWest HealthCare Properties REIT, Canada’s largest private owner and manager of medical office buildings and health-care facilities.

The school of public health will be headed by Winnipeg-born Dr. Jack Mandel, an internationally recognized epidemiologist who has worked in the United States for the last 35 years, most recently as chair of epidemiology for the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta.

“With the remarkable leadership of Jack Mandel, the great staff, faculty and students of our university, and this transformative gift from Paul and Alessandra, we are now in a position to compete with the best schools of public health south of the border,” university president David Naylor said Wednesday in a statement.

Mandel called his new post as director of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health “a tremendous opportunity.”

“I think it’s really one of the best opportunities out there in academic public health because of the resources that exist here, and by resources I mean the pool of talent that exists here within the university and within the community to mobilize and collaborate on addressing the health issues of today,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

The school will incorporate the university’s department of public health sciences and team up with other departments, among them dentistry, nursing and health policy management, as well as hospitals affiliated with the university, government and public health agencies.

Its mandate will cover a broad range of public health issues, from infectious and neurological diseases to chronic conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

“So the school will really be broadly representative of all the areas of public health and will basically have all the disciplines you’d find in all public health schools in North America,” Mandel said.